


The Lavender Scare

by Hexiva



Category: James Bond - Ian Fleming
Genre: 1950s, Blackmail, Cold War, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, James Bond Is A Misogynist, M/M, McCarthyism, Misogyny, Nazis, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Spy thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27787621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: At the end of a routine mission in America, James Bond is contacted by his old friend, Felix Leiter. Leiter is being blackmailed and needs help. But solving his problem will lead Bond into the gay underbelly of Washington DC, and into conflict with the McCarthyist forces of 1950s America.
Relationships: James Bond/Felix Leiter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	1. 1 …… HAVEN OF EVIL

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Versaphile for betaing this fic, as well as to JellyMish and Liz for moral support and inspiration. I would also like to thank Liz Friedman and Christopher Silber, the writers of the Elementary episode "Dead Man's Switch," from which I have borrowed a number of plot points. This is not an Elementary fic and no knowledge of that show is required for this fic. 
> 
> Content notes: This fic deals with heavy material, primarily misogyny and homophobia. Homophobic slurs are used. There is also a brief scene in which a straight woman forces a gay man to kiss her - it's pretty bad as forced kisses go, but it doesn't go any further than that. 
> 
> How this fic ties into the timeline of James Bond is kind of iffy - Bond and Leiter have known each other for some time now, on multiple missions, but Leiter still works for the CIA and isn't disabled yet (sorry, fellow disabled people!). 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! If you like it, please leave a comment!

'The FBI owes you one, James Bond,' the man in the broad-brimmed hat said. 'Without your help, we'd never have caught the mafia kingpin so quickly. Of course,' he added, in an obligatory nod to national pride, 'We'd have caught him eventually. But you sped up the process considerably.' 

'It's my pleasure, sir,' Bond said. 'Or rather, the British government's. I was lucky enough to be able to turn the man's secretary. Dangerous business, letting a woman handle one's incriminating evidence. They get their heads turned the moment a man catches their eye.' 

The FBI agent looked faintly uncomfortable with this comment. 'Yes, well, be that as it may be,' he said, vaguely. 'You've done your country, and ours, a great service today. I see your plane back to England isn't scheduled for another week, so I hope you'll enjoy a chance to play the tourist for awhile. See the sights of Washington DC, and all that.' 

'Of course, sir,' Bond said. 'I'm looking forward to sampling a few of the restaurants here. Although perhaps I ought to steer clear of any Italian restaurants for the foreseeable future. I think I've made a few enemies on this case.' 

'Such is the life of an agent,' the FBI man said, sympathetically. 'Well, off with you, then. Consider yourself off duty for the next week.' 

Bond exited the man's office into the bustle of FBI headquarters. He took a breath and considered his plans for the week. Restaurants, of course. Perhaps, yes, a little sight-seeing. And perhaps he might find himself in the company of a woman who wouldn't mind that he was leaving for England next week… 

'Hey, James,' said a voice, and Bond jumped, half expecting some gun toting mafioso. He relaxed when he saw the familiar face of CIA agent Felix Leiter. 

'Felix!' he said, smiling. 'What the devil are you doing in the FBI offices? Thought you chaps didn't get on.' 

'Quietly, I'm in enemy territory,' Leiter joked, but there was a strained quality to his customary good cheer, and Bond realized he was here for more than to greet an old friend. 

'Are you here on business?' Bond asked, his pulse quickening at the prospect of another mission. 

But Leiter shook his head. 'Not exactly,' he said. His eyes darted, as if he didn't trust the FBI men surrounding them, and Bond caught a flash of real fear in his eyes. 'It's sort of a personal matter. Can we talk in private? Here - you can come back to my place and we can share a drink, and I'll lay the matter out for you.' 

Leiter and Bond had worked together on several cases since meeting during the Le Chiffre case, and Bond enjoyed his company. Even if Leiter hadn't needed his help, spending a few hours drinking with his American friends would have been a pleasing prospect. 'Of course,' Bond said. 

'I'll give you a ride. Little harder to catch a cab here than in London,' Leiter said. 

The ride back to Leiter's place was filled with light conversation, but Bond could still sense that tension underlying it, something he'd never seen in Leiter before. What could have Leiter so shaken up?  _ Sort of a personal matter,  _ he'd said. What did that mean? 

Leiter led the way into his house, a small, newly constructed one - bathroom - not lavish, but tastefully decorated. Leiter invited Bond to sit on the couch and, to Bond's surprise, began to perform a thorough search for bugs. 

'Sorry,' Leiter said once he was done. He pulled a bottle of vodka out of his drinks cabinet, and a pair of glasses. 'I had a bad experience with bugs recently. Martinis?'

'Always,' Bond said. 'I take it you’re not talking about insects.'

'No,' Leiter said darkly. 

He mixed them two vodka martinis - a little stronger than Bond was used to. Bond took a sip of his, and reflected that this might be a conversation requiring a strong martini.

'I don’t quite know where to start with this,' Leiter confessed, sipping his martini. 

'Just lay it out for me,' Bond said. 'How can I help?'

Leiter sighed, and took a swig of his martini, and swallowed. 'Before I start,' he said, 'I want you to know that you’re not obligated to help me. You can feel free to back out, and you won’t be dragged into this, and I’ll accept the consequences. Your name isn’t connected to this, no one will think the worse of you if - this business comes to light. I wouldn’t ask you if there was anyone else I could ask. I know how you feel about - this sort of thing.' There was a hint of bitterness in that last sentence that Bond couldn’t make sense of. 'But if I took this to any of my fellow CIA men, they’d be obligated to report it up the chain. Security risk, you know. And a civilian wouldn’t be much help.'

Bond listened with concern. 'Felix, what are you mixed up in?' he asked. 

Leiter sighed again. 'I’m being blackmailed,' he said, flatly.

Bond’s eyes opened wide in surprise, and Leiter continued: 'About a month ago, I got a phone call from a strange man. He played an audio recording for me, made covertly, of one of my - uh - indiscretions.' Leiter made a vague gesture with his martini glass. 'And demanded money, of course. And I - well, I knew blackmailers never let you go. But I paid up.' He drank from his martini, his face grim. 'I paid up twice. But a week ago I got another call from the blackmailer - and this time he didn’t ask for money. He wanted information, CIA intelligence - things I couldn’t even share with  _ you.  _ And that - I wouldn’t do. I’d rather face the consequences than betray my country. Wretched place though it may be,' he added, with a bitter twist to his mouth that Bond had never seen before. 

Bond frowned, equally confused as he was concerned. 'But, Felix, I don’t understand why you can’t go to the CIA about this. Of course I understand why you don’t want a recording of yourself in an intimate moment released to the public - no man wants that - but surely your agency can help you. It’s not as if they’re going to fire you for sleeping with a woman out of wedlock. Surely every man does it; they know that.'

Leiter gulped the last of his martini, and gazed off into the wallpaper near Bond’s head. 'I wasn’t sleeping with a woman,' he said, flatly. 'I was sleeping with a man.'

'Oh,' Bond said. 

A terrible silence stretched in the small parlour.

It was not as if Leiter was the first homosexual Bond had ever known. Even putting aside the various unsavory characters he had faced - and, sometimes, worked with - in the course of his work, he had been a Navy man. Everyone knew when you were out at sea a long way from any women, some men made do. And some men made do more than others. 

Bond had always regarded these men as afflicted rather than culpable - deserving of pity, like madmen and obsessives and drunkards. He did not think that any man would  _ choose  _ to have such a condition. And yet - he had never taken Leiter for one of them. Leiter, who had always seemed proud and unburdened and - well - manly. Leiter never flinched away from danger, or asked for pity or indulgence. There was nothing sickly or neurotic or unmanly about Leiter. 

'I never took you for a homosexual,' Bond said, to cut the awful silence suffocating him.

Leiter chuckled, bitter and harsh. He topped up his glass with more vodka, forgoing the vermouth this time. 'That was kind of the point,' he said. 'That kind of secret can ruin a man, especially these days. Especially in the CIA. I hear things are different in the FBI, if what they say about Hoover is true.' He smiled, to show it was a joke, although it was strained. 'But even he doesn’t dare admit what he is. Even if my superiors wanted to turn a blind eye, this kind of thing is exactly why men like me aren’t supposed to be handling sensitive information. Blackmail is always a risk . . . and here I am. And I was so careful, too.'

Bond had the horrible sense that Leiter was about to break into tears, and he didn’t think either he or Leiter could stand to have Bond see that. He hurried to move the conversation along. 'So do you want me to take care of this blackmailer?' he said. 'I’m a little out of my element in the States, but I’m sure something can be managed. Dead men tell no tales, and all that.'

Leiter was startled out of his bitterness. He blinked at Bond. 'Are you saying you’d kill the man for me?' he asked.

Bond shrugged. 'I’ve killed for less. It’s not as if it’s totally out of the line of duty; any criminal in desperate need of CIA secrets is likely to be a threat to both of our countries.' He considered his options, rolling it around in his brain. 'There’s a chap I met on my last mission here that would probably get rid of the body for me, too,' he commented. 'Tidier that way.'

Leiter let out a breath, and some of the tension drained out of the room. He shook his head, and stood to add vermouth into his glass, mixing a proper martini. 'Well, as much as I appreciate the offer,' he said, 'It won’t work. He’s planned for that. He told me as much - apparently he thinks all of us spies are assassins, not just you Limeys. He has an accomplice, and if he turns up dead, the accomplice has orders to release all of his sensitive information. If I want to get out of this with my career and my dignity intact, I need to find a way to silence the blackmailer  _ and  _ his accomplice.'

Bond nodded, all business now. This was his element. He wasn’t sure how to feel about Leiter’s homosexuality, or how to preserve his friendship with the man, or even how to comfort his friend when such a threat hung over his head - but he  _ could  _ hunt down a criminal, and silence him for Leiter. 'Tell me everything you know about the blackmailer,' he said, taking a swig of his martini. 

'More than he’d probably like,' Leiter said. 'I was able to track the money back to the man - his name is Harlow Gunner. He owns a hotel - unfortunately, the one I decided to take one of my - er - acquaintances back to. I don’t think this was a crime of opportunity - his hotel makes a lot more than you’d expect for what he charges. I think he’s been using his hotel to collect blackmail material _ en masse _ . Not just homosexuals, but often them. Er - us. He’s a widower - wife died of polio back before the war. Never remarried, but I don’t think he’s one of us. No obvious close associates, no criminal record. You’d think he was a respectable man, if you didn’t know he made a side business out of blackmailing people.'

'Unsavory business,' Bond said. 'If we take this man down, we’ll be doing more people a favor than just you. And some of them might be in possession of state secrets too . . .'

Leiter nodded. 'I wouldn’t do it,' he said, grimly. 'But someone out there will.'

'How long did he give you?' Bond asked. 'Before the tapes go public, that is.'

'Forty-eight hours,' Leiter said.

Bond nodded. 'We’d better move fast, then.'

* * *

The hotel was a nice place. Not up to Bond’s usual standards, but certainly nicer than one would have expected for the price. Bond paused outside, and looked up at the big multi-story building, painted in white and orange. On the arc above the big front doors, the words  _ Haven Hotel  _ were painted in orange.

'Not much of a haven, is it?' Bond commented. 

'Quite the opposite,' Leiter said. 

Bond pushed the big double doors open and led the way in. The reception room was decorated in that garish modern style which Bond found rather trying. A blue-and-brown patterned carpet, mustard-yellow armchairs, and an olive couch. It all made Bond vaguely nauseous. He supposed one couldn’t expect good taste from a blackmailer.

There was a young man sitting behind the reception desk, and a maid vacuuming behind the armchairs. She was pretty, in that sort of plain and refreshing way that young and naive women often are, with big blue eyes and neat black hair curled at the base of her skull. Bond took a moment to admire her figure, which was a perfect hourglass. He wondered if it was augmented by any of those clever devices which women wore under their clothes, or if she had simply been blessed by nature. The latter, he decided. There was something natural and unrestrained in her beauty that didn’t fit with that kind of artifice. 

Leiter elbowed him in the ribs, startling him out of his thoughts. 'We’re not here to ogle the staff,' Leiter said, annoyed. 

'Just because you don’t doesn’t mean I can’t,' Bond said, faintly reproving. It wasn’t his fault that Leiter had unnatural instincts. But as soon as he’d thought that, he found himself feeling vaguely ashamed of the thought. It wasn’t Leiter’s fault either - and Leiter, whatever else he might be, was Bond’s friend.

To cover for his embarrassment, Bond strode up to the reception desk. 'Room for one,' he said. It would be easier for him to keep an eye on this Gunner fellow if he was living in the man’s hotel. But when the receptionist’s eyes flicked to Leiter, Bond found himself blurting out, 'My friend’s here to help me with my bags.'

He cursed himself for that. Of course that was what was happening - Leiter was carrying bags with Bond’s name on them, it was a room for  _ one,  _ and, above all, he and Leiter were both men. No one would suspect any sort of funny business, except for the fact that Bond had just proven himself a little too eager to disprove that notion. The quickest way to make people suspicious was to act as if there was something to hide.

'Sure,' the receptionist said, in his broad American accent, and Bond couldn’t tell whether he believed him or not. Money exchanged hands, and the receptionist turned around to fish through drawers for an appropriate hotel key.

'Could I have a room on the top floor, if it’s not too much trouble?' Bond asked. 'I’m a tourist here, and I’d love to have a good view out over the city. And this is such a tall building, I’m sure the view must be striking.'

The receptionist shrugged. 'Sure,' he said again. That word seemed to make up a good 90% of the American vocabulary. 'But I gotta warn you, the view’s nothing to write home about. Mostly other hotels and streets.'

Bond shrugged in return. 'As long as they’re not London hotels and London streets, I’ll count it as a novelty,' he said. According to Leiter’s research, Harlow Gunner lived in a suit on the upper floor of his own hotel. Proximity would make this mission much easier.

'Sure,' the receptionist said. 'Room D25, all the way on the top floor.'

Bond and Leiter took the lift up, and Leiter made polite conversation with the lift operator. Bond watched carefully to see if any of the hotel staff seemed to recognize Leiter from his earlier visit - that would be a tell that they might have been involved in Gunner’s operations. If any of them did, they hid it well.

They opened the door to room D25. Bond made a face at the decor, which was more cream and orange, with a stonelike pattern to the wallpaper that revolted him. 

'Too American for you?' Leiter teased.

'Too modern,' Bond replied. 'Now - odds are good that the man won’t be home in the middle of the day. Running a hotel keeps one busy, I imagine.'

'And all those homos aren’t going to blackmail  _ themselves,'  _ Leiter said. 'He makes his threatening calls from a phone booth down the street. I suppose he doesn’t want to get the stench of blackmail all over his legitimate business.'

'Then his rooms are likely to be empty for the day,' Bond said. 'We can get in and take a look around and be out before he comes back.'

Leiter set Bond’s bags down by his bed and nodded. 'We’ll have to be quick about it.'

'We’re professionals,' Bond said, by way of reassurance. 'He’s not.'

They strode down the hallway, looking as if they belonged here. Finding the corridor in front of Gunner’s suite empty, Leiter knelt down in front of the door and pulled out a set of lockpicks. 'Keep an eye out,' he said.

Luckily for them, Gunner’s suit was a dead-end, with only one way down the corridor to the suite. Bond went down to the corner, just out of sight of Leiter, and kept an eye out for passers-by. For a good five minutes, the upper floor was deserted - and then Bond heard the sound of a lift, and was on his guard.

A moment later, the pretty maid whom Bond had seen downstairs came walking down the corridor, and Bond acted quickly. He darted out from behind the corner, and slung an arm around her shoulders. 

'I’ve been looking for you all over,' Bond said, his voice low and seductive. 'I saw you in the hotel lobby and I just couldn’t help myself . . . you are  _ gorgeous.' _

She gave a squeak of fear. 'You - I - I - I didn’t see you come up!'

'But I saw you,' Bond said, softly. 'Tell me you’ll go out for drinks with me. Or I’ll buy you dinner - anything you please. Just say you’ll go out with me.'

'Sir, I - I’m at work, I can’t be seen fraternizing with the customers,' the maid protested.

'A little fraternizing never hurt anyone,' Bond said. 'Surely you can make an exception for me?'

_ 'No,' _ the maid said, firmly. 'I need this job.'

Bond heard a click and the sound of a hotel door opening and closing behind them, and knew Leiter was in. He made a show of a disappointed sigh, and let the maid go. 'Your loss,' he said, lightly. 'But I’ll be a gentleman about it. See you around.' He walked on past the maid, in the direction of the lift. Once she was out of sight, however, down another labyrinthine corridor of this damnable hotel, Bond doubled back to Gunner’s door. He pulled open the still-unlocked door and slipped inside.

'That was close,' Leiter commented. 

'I handled it,' Bond said.

'I’m sure you did,' Leiter said, and Bond cast a quick look at him, suspecting that he heard a note of distaste in Leiter’s voice. However, Leiter was occupied with searching Gunner’s wardrobe, and Bond couldn’t see his face.

Bond joined in the search. He discovered a few telltale precautions Gunner had set up in case of just such a search - a dusting of power on the desk, a hair twined around the closet door. Bond carefully removed them and then replaced them when he was done searching each location. There were a few clues as to the man’s character - climbing ropes, telling of an athletic passion, heart medication, suggesting he struggled with angina, and a handful of books about famous American baseball players. Bond was more interested by what he found in the closet - high-tech devices that he recognized as the latest in covert audio transmission. 'This must have cost him a fortune,' he commented. 

'Look,' Leiter said. He was kneeling next to a leather-bound chest with his lockpicks in his hands. He set down the lockpicks, and reached into the chest to pull out a reel of tape. 'It’s full of audio tapes and ledgers. I think this is where he keeps his - '

It was then that they heard the  _ click  _ of a key being inserted into the lock of Gunner’s door. It was a little noise, but in the silence of the hotel room, it might as well have been a gunshot. Bond and Leiter darted to their feet and exchanged a look of pure adrenaline. 

Bond knew that there was no back door to the hotel suite. He started towards the window, and looked down into an empty alleyway, four stories down. No good.

'Hide,' Leiter hissed.   
  
Bond couldn’t argue with that. The two agents darted for Gunner’s closet and piled in, slamming the door behind them, Bond closest to the door and Leiter jammed in behind them.

Bond barely dared to breath as he heard Gunner enter the room. He could feel Leiter’s breath on his neck, hot and artificially slow with the need not to make too much noise. Bond felt as if he were sweating in a sauna, the closet suddenly too close and too warm with Leiter’s body pressed up against his. Bond felt he could hear both his own and Leiter’s heartbeats pounding in his ears. 

Through the slats in the closet door, Bond watched Gunner walk through the room. He checked his various fail-safes, the hair, the powder, and although Bond knew he and Leiter had replaced them all exactly as they had been, this didn’t seem to calm Gunner. It was as if he  _ knew  _ they were in the room somewhere. Bond watched, shaking, as Gunner drew a pistol from his coat and locked on a silencer. He searched the bathroom first, under the bed, and then approached the closet door.

Behind him, Bond felt Leiter tense up, and reach for something. Bond was nearly hyperventilating himself. 

Gunner wrenched open the door, and Bond got his first glimpse of the man. He was utterly unremarkable, a red-faced, wrinkled man in his 50s or 60s, dressed in a white shirt and charcoal slacks. And he was holding a gun pointed right at Bond.

_ How ironic,  _ Bond thought, in that distant and drifting way that terror brought on.  _ After all the exotic threats I’ve faced, it’s going to be this banal little man who kills me -  _

And then there was the  _ bang  _ of a silenced gunshot, and Bond squeezed his eyes shut, expecting pain, but there was none, nothing.

'Christ,' Leiter breathed, behind him, and lowered his gun arm.

Bond’s eyes flickered open, and he found himself staring down at the corpse of Harlow Gunner, lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of his hotel room, stone dead.

'Shit,' Leiter said, 'Shit, this is - oh, god. Get - get out of my way, James, I think I’m gonna be sick - '

Bond stumbled out of the closet, stepping over Gunner’s body, and Leiter after him. He heard Leiter hurry into the bathroom, and the distant sounds of a man trying to throw up quietly.

His brain slowly flicked back into motion. Gunner was dead - that was a problem, because now his accomplice had motive to publish the secrets of all of Gunner’s victims, including Leiter. What could be done about that? Well, they had to find the accomplice, of course. That part of the mission hadn’t changed. And the best way to buy time for themselves would be to make it much harder for the accomplice to find out about Gunner’s death. Muddy the waters enough, and the accomplice might hesitate, give them time to work - 

Bond stepped over to Gunner’s phone and made a call to a certain acquaintance of his, a man who had given him valuable information on his last mission. The man wasn’t a loyal MI6 informant, but neither was he a dyed-in-the-wool mafia man - he would work for the highest bidder, and Bond had enough funds to acquire his services. 

As he hung up the phone, Leiter emerged from the bathroom, looking pale but determined. 'Sorry,' he muttered, wiping his mouth with a towel. 'Haven’t had to - do that, since the war.'

'It happens to the best of us,' Bond said, gently. 'Did you see anything like ropes while you were searching the man’s belongings?'

Leiter seemed startled by the question, but he nodded. 'Yes - climbing ropes. Looked like a hobby of his.'

'Good,' Bond said. 'We can use that to tie the body up and lower it down into the alleway below. Then we can cart it off in a dumpster. Not much of a send-off, but I don’t suppose he’ll complain.'

'And then what?' Leiter said. 

'There’s a fellow I know, owns a construction company - he’ll let us bury the body in the foundations of one of his sites, no questions asked. I met him on my last mission. Used to work for the mafia, but since I upset all of that for him, he’ll be glad of some independent business, as it were.'

Leiter blinked at him, and then his eyes flicked down to the corpse bleeding out on the hotel floor, and then to Bond. 'License to kill,' he said, half to himself. 'Never really thought about what that means before. Not the first time you’ve had to hide a body, is it?'

Bond shrugged. He felt no shame, and very little guilt, about what he did. 'It’s a living,' he said. 'Not so different from being a soldier, when you think about it.'

'I suppose not,' Leiter said, shaking his head. 'Still, it feels different. Seems wrong, like . . . I don’t know. Fighting a war on American soil.'

Bond smiled a little. 'I suppose both of us are more used to operating out of our countries. Nature of the job . . . Still, though, handy in this situation, to have a few contacts on the other side of the law. If we can cover up the death, maybe make his friend think he’s missing rather than dead - or out of town, better yet - '

'Then I can buy some time,' Leiter said, nodding. He swept his mop of straw-colored hair back into place, and shot a grin - which was only slightly shaky - at Bond. 'Good thing I have a friend who keeps his cool under fire.'

'It’s only fair,' Bond said, returning the smile. 'You saved my skin, after all. He was about to shoot me.'

'We’ll call it even, then.' Leiter considered. 'There’s letters in his desk - I can forge his handwriting, send a note to the hotel manager saying he’ll be out of town for a week or so. Family emergency . . . he seems to have been a letter-writer by nature, judging by how many of ‘em he’s got in his desk.' He stepped over to the desk and pulled out a pen and paper.

Bond started to wrap the body up in a hideous green shag rug, tying it with the climbing ropes. There was a pair of the awful rugs, and Bond swept the second one over the blood stain. He could see that the rest of the hotel had gotten its repulsive modern style from Gunner’s own tastes. 'I’ll need your help with this - With one of us up here and one of us down in the alleyway, we can lower the corpse out the window quickly and quietly, and have it away.'

Leiter finished with the letter, blowing on the ink to dry it, and folded it up into an envelope. 'First, let’s make sure we’re not leaving anything behind in the suite. We don’t want to have to break in again - it could draw extra attention that we don’t need.'

'Good thinking,' Bond said. He glanced at the chest. 'We ought to take the ledgers and tapes back with us - we can examine them at our leisure back at your place.'

'Yes, and this recording equipment - ' Leiter said, pulling the closet door open to look at the equipment semi-concealed in the back. 

'We should take that back with us too,' Bond said.

'Actually,' Leiter said, with a gleam in his eye. 'I was thinking we could beat him at his own game.' He leaned into the closet, and pulled out the transmitting devices - disguised as clocks. Bond eyed them reticently, noting that he had one just like it in his own hotel room. 'We can set one of these up in the room, near the door,' Leiter explained. 'That way, if anyone comes by looking for Gunner, we’ll be able to hear it.'

'I like it,' Bond said, grinning. 'Give Gunner’s accomplice a taste of his own medicine, if he decides to come snooping.'

'I recognize the technology,' Leiter said. 'It should be able to transmit back to your hotel room, if you’ve got the receiver there. We found one like it in the office of the US ambassador to Moscow just last year . . . it’d been there since the end of the war. Clever device.'

Bond set up the false clock just behind Gunner’s dresser, which was next to the door, and aimed it at the door. 'Will it be able to hear through the door?' he asked.

'Trust me,' Leiter said, grimly. 'According to the recording Gunner played for me, those things can hear  _ everything.' _

Bond winced at the mental image, and hid it by fishing through Gunner’s closet to find his briefcase. He loaded the receiver into it, and set it by the door. Leiter grabbed a coat and started pilling tapes and ledgers onto it, tying it into a makeshift bundle with a few of Gunner’s ties. 'We can lower it down along with the - uh - his body. That way we won’t look too suspicious walking around with bags of tapes.'

Bond nodded. 'You get down to the alleyway, I’ll lower both of them down. See if you can’t find a dumpster or something to transport the body in. I’ll meet you in the alleyway once everything’s down.'

* * *

Bond set up the receiver in his hotel room, concealed in the closet behind a coat he’d stolen from Gunner, and set it to record. Then he met Leiter in the alleyway and hauled the body away in a dumpster to his contact’s construction site, where it was laid down in the concrete, to leave no trace by the morning. Then, glad to have done with the whole grisly business, Bond returned to Leiter’s house, where Leiter received him with a very welcome martini. 

They sat and drank for a while, in companionable silence, recovering their spirits, before they were ready to face the tapes and the ledgers. Then, with a grim little toast, they laid out the evidence between them, Bond with the ledgers and Leiter with the tapes. 

Bond went through the ledgers methodically, with a trained eye. This kind of desk work had never been his forte, but he had a lot of practice with it, and he was confident he could hold his own. A lot of it was quantities in American dollars and dates - payments made, payments missed. A note when threats had been issued or new victims had been added to the roster - and one or two notes where the threats had been carried out, information released. To Bond’s dismay, he recognized a few names - FBI agents, American officials, even a few MI6 agents who did their business in the USA. Nobody personally critical to national security, but enough people with high-level security clearances to make him nervous.

He looked up from his work to discover that Leiter had sorted the tapes into two distinct piles, ones with a red label and ones with a blue label.

'Anything?' Leiter asked him.

Bond shook his head. 'There’s a lot of references to his accomplice here, but they’re all under a codename. Gunner calls the man  _ Duce  _ or  _ Il Duce.  _ Seems to be a bit ironic, because I don’t get the impression Duce was calling the shots. They seem to have blackmailed half of Washington DC, but I can’t think of any particular reason any of these names would have worked with him in that way. There’s some pretty grisly material in here - I would think any of these people would want him dead just as badly as we did.'

'Well, I might have found something,' Leiter said, and he took a tape from each pile, red and blue, and handed them to Bond.

Bond looked at the labels. The red one had a name, a date, and the word  _ Haven  _ written neatly on the label in Gunner’s neat, sharp-edged writing. The blue one had another name, another date, and the words  _ Betsy’s  _ written on it.

'What’s this?' he asked.

'More than half the tapes have the red labels, and say  _ Haven _ on them,' Leiter said. 'Mr. Gunner was a very organized man, luckily for us. But these blue ones make up a good third to a half of the total tapes.'

'What do you make of them?' Bond asked. 'Who’s Betsy?'

Leiter shook his head. 'Betsy isn’t a person, or at least, not anymore. I think it’s referring to the name of a bar downtown,  _ Betsy’s Paradise.  _ It’s a bar where homosexuals tend to congregate. To find assignations, or just - company. Maybe something more, if we’re lucky . . .'

Bond blinked, suddenly uncomfortable. He was still struggling to fit the information about Leiter’s preferences into his mental conception of the man. And sometimes, when Leiter said something like that, it felt like he couldn’t avoid the knowledge anymore. After all, he told himself, this was the core of the mission. He had better get over his squeamishness fast.

'So - not all of his blackmail tapes were taken at Haven Hotel,' Bond said, fighting to keep his mind on the mission.

'No,' Leiter said. 'And who’d make a better accomplice than another blackmailer? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours . . .'

'You think the proprietor of the bar is our man?' Bond asked.

'Or someone who works there,' Leiter said. There was a glint of hope in his eye, and Bond found himself feeling the same. Could it really be that simple? 'I know who the proprietor is - a man named Avraham Levitt. Keeps to himself a lot . . . he was injured in the war, got half his face sliced off with shrapnel. He’s in his fifties - quiet type, I don’t know him well. I’m not sure anyone does. Chatter in the community says he’s got a steady partner, a Spanish fellow around his age who hangs around the bar sometimes.'

Bond stood. 'I think perhaps we should have a word with Mr. Levitt,' he said. 'Go to his bar . . . and if we find out he’s who we’re looking for, well - my friend can find a place to fit another body into his foundations.'

* * *

The bar was dimly lit, dingy in the way working-class pubs tended to be, but otherwise it seemed fairly respectable. There were a few men there - and it  _ was  _ mostly men - who struck Bond as vaguely Bohemian in their clothing, poet types, but there was nothing outwardly effeminate on display. What he noticed most of all was the air of tension and secrecy that pervaded the place. A memory floated into Bond’s mind of a time he had made contact with a French resistance group during the war. They had had the same air to them, that of people to whom secrecy and paranoia had become second nature. 

Eyes flicked to Bond and Leiter immediately they walked in the door. They had been picked out as an outsider, an intruder into the sanctum. Bond glanced at Leiter, wondering about that. After all, Bond didn’t belong there, but Leiter did. But the patrons of this bar looked at him the same way they did Bond. Did they not know that Leiter was one of them? Or was it because they knew too much, not too little - knew that Leiter was ultimately an instrument of the law which would sweep this place off the map given half a chance. 

Leiter didn’t seem bothered by the suspicion. He took a seat at the bar, in a corner away from the center, and gestured to Bond to sit with him. He didn’t need to point out the proprietor, Avraham Levitt - Bond spotted him immediately, a tall grey-haired man with scars creating cracks across his face. 

He was occupied with other customers, and Bond and Leiter opted to wait and watch for a while. Bond pulled out two of his gold-banded cigarettes, and offered one to Leiter, who accepted. They smoked in silence, watching Levitt serve other customers. Bond caught a glimpse of proud brown eyes staring out from the patchwork of scar tissue. He must have served his country bravely in the war, Bond thought. What had made the man decide to turn blackmailer?

'During the war,' Bond said, abruptly, 'There was a chap who helped us out a great deal - saved our bacon, in fact, by figuring out the Nazis’ naval codes. Alan Turing. I met him once or twice . . . eccentric fellow, but very smart. I never knew what became of him after the war . . .' He took a drag on his cigarette. 'I heard about him again last year,' he said. 'He was charged and convicted of indecency. His security clearance was revoked, and he agreed to undergo some ghastly medical procedure as a term of his probation.'

Leiter’s eyes flicked from Levitt to Bond, unreadable. 'I read about it,' he said. 'I never knew he was Intelligence, though.'

'Yes,' Bond said. 'Well. It was all classified. I suppose that’s what we sign up for, in Intelligence - that our contributions, whatever they are, will go unsung. Still, it seems like a grisly end to such a career.'

Leiter took a drag from his cigarette and looked back towards Levitt. 'You have good taste in cigarettes,' he commented. And then, after a moment, his eyes flicked back to Bond. 'What they did to him - ' He shook his head. 'I’d rather die.'

Bond forced himself to think about it, to put himself in Turing’s shoes. In Leiter’s shoes. 'Me, too,' he was forced to agree, after a moment. 

Leiter was silent, his eyes back on Levitt, and Bond left him alone to his thoughts until they were interrupted by Levitt’s approach. 

'Can I get you gentlemen something?' Levitt asked, jovially enough.

'In a way,' Bond said, coolly. He slipped a hand into his coat, and produced an ID card, which he slid across the bar so that Levitt could see it. It was the false cover ID he had used in the course of his last mission, which read  _ Thomas Roberts, FBI Special Consultant.  _

Levitt blanched suddenly, his scars standing out starkly on his suddenly white face. He looked as if he was about to be sick. 'I - ' he started, and then cut himself off.

'Is there somewhere we could talk privately?' Leiter interjected smoothly. 'One of the back rooms, perhaps.'

'Yes - yes,' Levitt said, visibly steadying himself. His left hand had curled into a fist, and the knuckles were white. 'The back rooms. It’s still early, so most of them are empty.'

It dawned on Bond that the back rooms were no doubt where the bar’s patrons carried out their assignations, and thus, presumably, where the incriminating audio had been recorded. His hand slipped under his jacket, close to his side-arm. Nevertheless, he and Leiter followed Levitt back behind the bar to an empty room with a small bed. Levitt glanced around it, like a host embarrassed by the quality of his accommodations, and stepped out to drag three chairs in. 

Bond’s eyes went to the clock perched on the bedside table. It was the same drab olive type as had been found in the Haven Hotel. As Levitt settled the last chair, Leiter strode over to the bedside table, seized the clock, and dashed it against the ground, hard enough to smash it open.

'Hey - !' Levitt protested. 'That’s my property, you can’t - '

Leiter pried the broken casing apart, discarded the clockwork part of the clock, and pulled out the capacitive membrane and antennae which comprised the simple audio bug. It only took a glance at Levitt’s face to know that he had known what the clock contained.

The room was dead silent as Leiter and Bond searched the rest of the room for further bugs, and found nothing. Levitt looked pale and ill.

'So,' Levitt said, as Leiter and Bond concluded their search. 'It was that rat Gunner, then. He ——ed me over, just like I always knew he would.'

'Yes,' Bond said, taking a seat with his hand still inside his jacket. 'After a fashion.'

'I’m afraid your friend Harlow Gunner met with a rather grisly end, Mr. Levitt,' Leiter said, with no small amount of pleasure.

Levitt jerked, as if he had been electrocuted. 'What - ?' he said. 'Gunner, dead?' His eyes widened, no longer so proud.

'Was he your lover?' Bond asked. 'If so, my condolences.' His tone gave the lie to his words. 

An indescribable expression passed over Levitt’s scarred features. 'My  _ lover?'  _ he said, and then spat on the ground. 'Damn you. Damn you all. Is that what you think of me? I have my standards, and Gunner may have thought he was the cream of the crop, but he was a vile little man. I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved it. Whatever the consequences, if it ruins me, at least the world will be a little better with him out of it.'

'If you thought so little of the man,' Leiter asked, raising an eyebrow, 'Then why work with him? Why agree to be his fail-safe?'

'His - ?' Levitt repeated, staring at them in bafflement. 'What? You think  _ I  _ was the one who was supposed to release his tapes if something happened to him? But I thought - I thought that was why you were here. I thought the man had died and the fail-safe had done his job. He warned everyone that that was the plan - if he died or was arrested, then the tapes would be sent out. Isn’t that why you’re here?'

'Mr. Levitt,' Bond said, coolly. 'We know that a good third of Gunner’s blackmail tapes were recorded in your own back rooms. We’ve just found one of his recording devices in this very room. It would be very dangerous, not to mention pointless, to try to lie to us at this point in the proceedings.'

'I’m  _ not  _ lying,' Levitt snapped. 'I was another victim here, damn you. He was blackmailing me too! And when it was only for money, it wasn’t so bad, but then he realized he could rope me into his awful schemes, and then it was more. He wanted me to install these damn devices into my rooms, and record - ' Levitt cut himself off, and indignation and shame warred in his face. 'I didn’t want to do it,' he said, softly. 'My patrons are - they’re my community. That means something to me. We have to stick together in these dark times. But I - I have a wife, and a family, and I - she’d be ruined too if this came out. I had to do what he told me.'

'A wife?' Bond asked, and raised an eyebrow.

'Don’t look at me like that,' Levitt snapped. 'She knows about all this. We have an arrangement. It’s not something I would expect you police types to understand. But I did all this for her. I  _ never  _ betrayed her.'

'Why should we believe you?' Leiter asked. 'Not about your wife - I don’t care. But all the evidence looks like you’re Gunner’s fail-safe. Why should we believe you when you say you’re not?'

Levitt drew in a breath. 'I have proof,' he said, with slightly strained calm. 'I - he had to give me all this recording equipment to carry out his orders. And I thought - if I recorded his phone calls to me, at least I’d be able to bring him down with me if he ever pulled the trigger on me. Please - if you’re going to arrest me, at least let it be for what I did, and not for what I didn’t do.'

'Show us,' Bond said, not releasing the grip of his pistol.

Levitt took them back into his tiny study at the back of the bar, and played the tapes of Gunner’s gravelly voice threatening him if he failed to obey Gunner’s orders. As the last tape finished, Leiter stubbed his cigarette out in Levitt’s ashtray, and swore.

'Bad news?' Levitt said, confused by the strength of Leiter’s reaction.

'I’m being blackmailed by the bastard too,' Leiter confessed. 'My friend here has ties to the FBI, yes, but we’re here on - ah - personal business. Damn it, this means the accomplice must still be out there somewhere.' He looked almost as pale and grim as Levitt.

Bond sighed, and turned to the startled Levitt. 'Sorry to have shaken you up,' he said, and meant it. He felt rather bad for the man, whose distress was evident. 'We’re not here to close down your business. Rather, we’re trying to shut Gunner down. You can count on there being no trouble from our quarter - as long as you don’t show these recordings - ' And he gestured to the audio tapes. 'To anyone else. It’s in your best interest as well as ours - for the moment, your secrets and ours are safe. As long as you don’t act against Gunner, his friend _ Il Duce _ won’t have any reason to smell a rat.'

'But - I thought you said Gunner was dead?' Levitt questioned, blinking. He looked as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with his sudden reprieve.

'Yes,' Bond said. 'But for the moment, no one needs to know that. As long as we can keep his death a secret, we can buy ourselves - and you - some time to hunt down Duce.'

Levitt drew in a slow, deep breath, and some of the color came back into his face. He pulled a cigarette pack out of his desk, lit up, and took a drag. After a moment, he said, 'So, then, you two are - ?' And gestured between Bond and Leiter.

Bond was immediately ashamed to find his face going red and hot.  _ 'No,'  _ he said, very firmly.

Leiter cast Bond a look that suggested he had been unnecessarily vehement in his answer, and Bond found himself ashamed of that too, and all tangled up inside. Of course he would have considered it rude, cruel even, to say no in such a tone if asked if he was sleeping with a certain woman. It would imply that she was unattractive, inherently undesirable in some way. But Leiter wasn’t a woman, and surely he had to know that Bond wasn’t - like that - 

Bond opened his mouth, unsure what of what he should or could say, but found his brain empty of words. 

Leiter beat him to the punch. 'We’re just friends,' he said. 'The, uh, problem is - well, it’s on me, not on him.'

'Problem?' Levitt said, raising an eyebrow. 'Is that what you call it?'

Leiter avoided Levitt’s eyes, and Bond had the feeling that there was something he was missing here. 'Well,' he said. 'In this case, I suppose it is. I always knew it was a security risk.'

'It doesn’t have to be,' Levitt said. 'Men like Senator McCarthy say we’re a risk, and then they turn around and make the laws that make it ever riskier for people like us.'

'It’s the way of the world,' Leiter said.

'Is it?' Levitt asked. 'Not in France. Not in Morocco.'

Leiter shook his head and sighed. 'It’s the law, my friend. Whether we like it or not. I really am sorry to have scared you today.'

Levitt scowled, and looked away - but then he seemed to relent, letting out a long breath. 'Well,' he said. 'Having your secrets held hostage - that does things to a man. I know that more than most. I’ve done things I regret . . . so have you. For the moment, let’s call it even.'


	2. 2 ……. POISON LIPS

It was evening by the time Leiter and Bond left the bar, so they parted ways - Leiter back to his house, and Bond to his hotel room. 

Before showering and lying down to sleep, Bond took the ugly olive clock off his dresser and smashed it to pieces with the edge of the lamp, making sure all of the operating parts were broken. Sleep, unusually for him, was a long time coming - he kept replaying Leiter and Levitt’s conversation in his head, and couldn’t figure out why. 

That morning, he ordered room service, and was eating a satisfying breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. He thought that there was something vaguely inferior about the eggs you got in the USA, although he could never put his finger on what. 

It was then that he heard muffled voices coming from the closet, where he had hidden the tape recorder. Bond waited until the overheard conversation was over, then switched out the tape, grabbed a pencil and paper, and played it back. 

The audio started with the sound of knocking on Gunner’s door, becoming gradually louder, and the sound of a man’s annoyed huff. And then footsteps, and a woman’s voice - Bond recognized the maid - asked, 'Was there something you needed, sir?'

'Where the devil is Gunner?' demanded the man’s voice. 'We were supposed to have lunch yesterday - it’s been radio silence since then.'

'He went away quite suddenly for the week, sir,' the maid said. 'Family business, he said. Perhaps I could take a message for him?'

The man sighed in visible annoyance. 'Fine. Tell him that Officer Edward Huxtable of the MPD called for him.' And then, without saying goodbye, there was the sound of footsteps walking away.

Bond scribbled down the name and stopped the tape. He pulled the tape out and concealed the whole apparatus again in his closet, and then pulled a phonebook out of the bedside table and dialed the police non-emergency number for the Washington DC police. After a short delay, a young receptionist picked up. 'Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, non-emergency line, how can I help you?'

Bond affected an American accent. 'Hey, I was pulled over by a police officer today - he let me off with a warning, but I just noticed he dropped his wallet in my, ah, Ford. His name was Edward Huxtable - do you think you could find out which district he works in, so I could come down to the station and take it to him? I owe him one for letting me off.'

'Oh!' the receptionist said, surprised. 'Oh, of course. Let me see if I can ask - Robert? Hey, Robert, do you know if there’s a guy named Edward Huxtable - ' And so on and so forth, until someone who knew Huxtable had been located. 'Officer Huxtable works in the Second District - Shall I transfer you, sir?'

'Oh, don’t worry about it, I’ll just walk down there, it’s nearby,' Bond lied, and hung up. He finished the rest of his breakfast, and then called up Leiter to say he had a lead, and they should meet for lunch. 

Over a lunch of very fine lobster gratin and adequate roasted potatoes, Bond explained the lead he’d found, and as soon as the bill was paid, the two of them set off towards the police department of the Second District of Washington DC. 

Edward Huxtable was a tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired, square-jawed American man. Bond noticed, with amusement, that he had a three-inch scar on his left cheek, the mirror of Bond’s.

Those clear blue eyes flicked up from Huxtable’s desk as Bond and Leiter approached. Bond pulled out his FBI ID and flashed it at Huxtable. 'FBI Consultant James Bond,' he said. 'My companion and I need to talk to you privately.'

The officer’s face paled, just as Levitt’s had. It reminded Bond, who had been behind the Iron Curtain on one or two occasions, more than a little of the reception the KGB received from loyal Soviet citizens, and he suddenly wondered how he had wound up playing the role of the secret police. There was a difference between the way people reacted to him as an MI6 agent in England, and the way they reacted to him as an FBI agent in the States, and Bond was not at all sure he liked it.

'Of - of course,' Huxtable said, faltering, and then gathered himself and stood. 'There’s an interview room in the back of the precinct, I’ll show you the way.' He led the way back into an empty interview room, with one table, a handful of chairs, and glaring lights above. Bond made a point of shutting the door behind them.

'What’s this all about?' Huxtable asked.

'Harlow Gunner,' Leiter said.

Huxtable looked coldly back. 'Sorry. Can’t place the name. Is that someone I’m supposed to know?'

Leiter leaned back against the wall, the mop of his blonde hair falling back away from his face as he crossed his arms. With the harsh glare of the overhead lights casting his handsome features into sharp relief, Bond thought he looked a little like the romantic hero of some black-and-white cowboy movie. 'You’ve never met him? Funny, you seemed pretty clear when you were pounding on his door earlier today.'

Huxtable swallowed. 'I was looking for the owner of the hotel so that I could discuss billing with him - I was overcharged. Couldn’t really remember his name. What’s all this got to do with the FBI?'

'This is a matter of national security,' Leiter said coldly. 'Harlow Gunner is blackmailing dozens of Americans for money and top-secret information. We have all of his tapes. We have names, places, times. And all the evidence points towards  _ you  _ as his accomplice Il Duce, the man who keeps the other copies of his tapes ready to release.'

'One of you two is going to talk to us,' Bond said. 'Him or you. My advice, Mr. Huxtable, is to make sure you’re the first one to make a deal.'

But Huxtable was blinking up at them, startled by something Leiter had said. 'What did you say?' he said.

'I said,' Leiter said, with a hint of annoyance, 'Your friend is blackmailing dozens of - '

'No, no, I know, I got that part. But - money  _ and  _ top-secret information? What do you mean, top secret information?' Huxtable seemed agitated. 

Leiter and Bond exchanged a look. 'At least one American agent has received a request from your friend Gunner for top-secret government information,' Bond said. 

Huxtable swallowed. 'I - don’t know anything about that.' Bond raised an ironic eyebrow. 

'No,' Huxtable insisted, 'You have to believe me. I knew about the money, but I - I’m a patriot, sir, I would never sell out my country. I don’t know what that’s about.'

'A patriot who was blackmailing half the capital?' Bond said. He had no sympathy for the man, patriot or no.

'Gunner wasn’t blackmailing  _ real  _ Americans,' Huxtable said. 'At least, not as far as I knew. Just a bunch of criminals and homos.' He saw the lack of sympathy in Bond’s cold eyes, and made a last attempt to defend himself. 'Listen, we’re all men of the world here, aren’t we? People like this, they’re disgusting. Bunch of Communists and cocksuckers, like Senator McCarthy says. They shouldn’t be in government to begin with. I figured, if I can make a quick buck off a bunch of homos, where’s the harm in that? Those perverts are destroying our country.'

'I always pitied homosexuals,' Bond said coldly. He had meant this as a defense of Leiter, so he was somewhat wrong-footed when Leiter shot him a bitter glare.

'Maybe if you tell us everything you know about Gunner,' Leiter said, 'We can see our way to letting you off lightly. Since you’re a  _ real American  _ and all.' The sarcasm was biting.

Huxtable drew in a breath. 'Okay. Okay. First of all - I’m not Il Duce. I knew he had an accomplice, but I don’t know who he was. I met Gunner when I wrote him up for a parking ticket, and we got to talking. He was a man after my own spirit, you know? A red-blooded heterosexual. Seems to be a dying breed these days. And he said that if there was ever anyone I ran into in my work, you know, people who weren’t committing murder or anything like that, but people the country would be better off without - then I could make a little money on the side by selling the info to Gunner. That’s -  _ all  _ I did. I wasn’t his failsafe, and if there was - if there was any funny business, anything that threatened national security - I didn’t know about that.'

'You know,' Leiter said, examining his fingernails. 'I’m a friendly sort of guy. Inclined to let you off lightly. But my friend here can be truly ruthless.' Huxtable looked into Bond’s blue-grey eyes, and clearly believed Leiter. 'This is a very important case,' Leiter said. 'You know how this works . . . if you can’t help us, we’re gonna have to try other methods.'

Huxtable stiffened. 'Look, look, look,' he said, urgently. 'If Gunner’s a traitor, I want him put away as much as the next man. I’m not a ——ing commie. I don’t know for sure who Il Duce was, but there was one time Gunner asked me for a favor, a personal favor for a friend. Maybe that’s the guy? He had a touch of an accent, I think it was Italian. His name was - something funny, some pansy name, uh - Angelique. Something Angelique. Trevor - no, it was Tresor. Tresor Angelique.'

'An Italian named Trésor Angélique?' Bond said, raising an eyebrow.

Huxtable shrugged. 'I thought it was weird too. But that’s what he said his name was. He’d gotten mixed up in some sort of smuggling business, and wanted to keep his name clear of it. And he was willing to pay well, so - ' Huxtable shrugged again. 

'What’s a little corruption among friends, eh?' Leiter said caustically.

'It wasn’t - it wasn’t like that, it was just a little tax avoidance,' Huxtable protested. 'It wasn’t serious, it wasn’t like this national security stuff. Come on. You know the real bad guys are still out there. I put guys like that behind bars.'

'Unless they pay handsomely,' Bond said, dryly. 

Leiter sighed, and swept a hand through his blond hair. He looked tired. 'Fine. This creep isn’t who we’re looking for, James.'

Bond stood, and unlocked the door, and he and Leiter started to head out.

'Wait!' Huxtable said. 'You guys aren’t gonna tell anyone about this, are you? Am I in the clear? I helped you out!'

'Yeah, well,' Leiter said, pausing at the door. 'I’ll sleep on it and see how I feel in the morning. Better hope I wake up on the right side of the bed. Have a good day, Officer Huxtable.' And he fired off a sloppy mock-salute before following Bond out of the precinct.

* * *

Bond invited Leiter back up to his hotel room for a drink. He saw Leiter hesitate - perhaps worrying that Bond might take his acceptance as some sort of unwelcome come on - before he accepted. Bond paused to make a few phone calls to a few discreet colleagues with a knack for finding people, and Leiter to do the same. Trésor Angélique appeared to be their only lead. But once room service arrived with a bottle of good vodka, the atmosphere in the room relaxed.

'I ordered vermouth and ice as well,' Bond complained. 'I prefer to mix my own martinis - that way I can have them the way I like. Where are they?'

Leiter shrugged. 'Can’t expect a blackmailer to hire good staff. Besides, I’m in a straight vodka sort of mood myself.' He poured a glass of the stuff, and swallowed it down, a grim look on his face. 

Bond studied Leiter’s handsome, deceptively boyish features. 'You’re sure Huxtable wasn’t our man?' he asked, pouring himself his own glass of vodka.

'Yeah,' Leiter said, and sighed. 'There are men like him in every police station in this country . . . and I suppose in the CIA too, and MI6. They’re repulsive, hypocritical little wretches, but they live and die by their belief in their own patriotism. Once he understood that this was a matter of national security, he was telling the truth to us. And it’s a damn shame, too, because he was our one lead.'

'Then you don’t think Trésor Angélique will be our man?' Bond asked.

Leiter shook his head. 'It must be a false name. What kind of a name is that for an Italian?'

'Even a false name can leave a trail,' Bond pointed out. He reached out to put a hand on Leiter’s shoulder. 'I’m not ready to give up yet, Felix, and neither should you. We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes, haven’t we?'

'Have we?' Leiter said, distantly. He took a sip of his vodka, and was silent for a few moments. 'You can’t imagine what it’s like here,' he said, eventually. 'In the States. It’s not like that in Britain, or not as bad. We’re all so afraid . . .'

'Afraid of what?' Bond asked, frowning.

Leiter took another gulp of vodka, and shook his head. 'The atomic bomb. Communism. Senator McCarthy. I don’t know.'

Bond knew of Joe McCarthy distantly, had read about him in the papers. He had always considered the man to be largely right - after all, Bond himself had encountered Communist agents in the West. But now he remembered the fear in Levitt and Huxtable’s eyes when he had pulled out the FBI identification. In that moment, he might as well have been a KGB loyalty officer, to them. What kind of victory was that, even if it kept the real KGB out of your country?

Sentimental nonsense, he told himself. Dark times required dark tactics. But then he looked up from his glass and saw the grim lines of Leiter’s face, the blue eyes distant, and was not so sure. 

'I’m sorry,' Bond said, and meant it.

Leiter offered him a wan smile. 'Thanks, James. Whatever happens next . . . it’s good to know you’re on my side.'

'Always,' Bond said.

Their moment was interrupted by the sound of a knock at the door. 'Room service!'

'There’s my damn vermouth,' Bond said, and stood to open the door. He returned with ice and vermouth. 'Why did that take longer than the vodka?' He started to mix himself a martini.

'None for me,' Leiter said, with a wave of his hand. 'Like I said. It’s a straight vodka sort of day today.'

Bond shook his head, and returned to the armchair with his martini in hand. 'We’ll catch the bastard yet,' he said, and took a big gulp of his martini. He made a face. 'What’s wrong with this vermouth? It tastes terribly bitter.'

'I suppose they ran down to the liquor store and bought whatever was cheapest in that pause,' Leiter said. 'Can’t expect a blackmailer to hire good staff.'

'Eurgh,' Bond said, and set the martini aside. 'Blackmail is one thing, but this is an insult to good liquor. And the vodka wasn’t so bad on its own.' He stood to dispose of the spoiled glass, and swayed suddenly. 'I - feel . . .' 

Leiter was on his feet immediately, reaching for Bond. 'The vermouth, it must have been - '

'Poisoned - ' Bond breathed out, and bolted for the hotel bathroom, wrenching the door open and only just managed to get to the toilet before he was thoroughly and noisily sick. '——,' he said, with feeling.

'James - ' Leiter said, his voice tight with fear. 

'I’ll be fine,' Bond said, indistinctly, and then his body spasmed, falling away from the toilet. He started to jerk again, wild and uncontrolled, his eyes staring and showing their whites.

Leiter swore and reached out for him, but there was no time, no time, he had to do something, and he let go of Bond’s seizing body and ran out of the bathroom.

Bond saw the bathroom ceiling move above him as his body jerked out of his control, and he tried to say something, but it was as if there was a giant fist clenched around his throat. It couldn’t have been more than a minute that Leiter was gone, but it felt like an eternity, imprisoned there on the cold bathroom floor, held hostage to his own body.

And then Leiter was back and there was something in his hand, a little capsule in cream-colored cloth, and he was pressing it to Bond’s mouth, and Bond inhaled involuntarily, a harsh, chemical-solvent smell filling his lungs, Leiter’s hand firm on his jaw, holding him in place, and Bond breathed in and in and -

The room flickered around him, and for a few minutes, he knew nothing. 

When he awoke, he was lying in Leiter’s arms, one of Leiter’s big hands cupping his skull so that it wouldn’t make contact with the cold floor of the bathroom. Leiter’s eyes were big and blue, looking down at him full of concern, and Bond thought how beautiful they were. A true, bright, sapphire blue, not like the cold blue-grey of his own. 

Bond’s hands came up and caught in the fabric of Leiter’s shirt, clean cotton smooth and familiar in his hands. 

'James . . .' Leiter breathed.

And without thinking, Bond leaned up, and pressed his lips to Leiter’s. They were firm and dry, not so dissimilar from a woman’s, and Bond shut his eyes, leaning into the kiss.

It lasted for only a few moments, and then Leiter jerked away, starting down at Bond, his eyes wide again. Bond’s first thought, ridiculously, was,  _ Should’ve brushed my teeth first.  _ And then he remembered what he was doing - lying on the floor of a hotel bathroom, kissing another man on the lips, and his face went red.

Leiter and Bond stared at each other silently for a few moments. Eventually, Bond asked, 'What was that you gave me?' For he felt better now - still profoundly unwell, dizzy, nauseous, and light-headed, but the seizures had gone, and he didn’t feel in danger of throwing up again. 

'Amyl nitrate,' Leiter said. 'It’s a cyanide antidote . . . I remembered seeing it on Gunner’s bedside table. It’s a heart medication too, you see, for angina . . . and I just - I didn’t think I’d be able to get you to help in time. But I remembered Gunner’s heart pills - and I thought - maybe that could save you.'

'Quick thinking,' Bond rasped, and shut his eyes. 'You saved my life, you know.'

'For a moment there,' Leiter said, quietly, 'I thought I hadn’t. When you passed out.'

'I always make it through,' Bond said. 'Somehow.' 

'You must have nine lives, James,' Leiter said, and offered Bond a hand up. Bond levered himself to his feet, shakily, and paused for a moment, standing there in Leiter’s arms, and his eyes drifted to Leiter’s lips.

But Leiter turned his face away, and helped him back out into the hotel room, so that Bond could lie on the bed. Bond fell back against the pillows and pulled the blankets up around himself. He felt terribly cold and unwell.

'You were poisoned,' Leiter said softly, taking a seat on the edge of Bond’s bed. 'That means Il Duce is on to us. I’m screwed.'

'We don’t know that for sure,' Bond said. 'I don’t have any shortage of other enemies. SMERSH, the American mafia, perhaps even some of the Spangled Mob leftover. It could have been one of them.' He wanted, desperately, to believe that.

Leiter gave him a wan smile, and lifted his glass of vodka in a mock-toast. 'Here’s hoping,' he said, and downed the last of it.

Bond swallowed. He wanted to shut his eyes, to curl up in the blankets and shut out the world and sleep until he felt better, but he knew there were things he had to address before he could. 'Felix - about the - what I did, a moment ago - '

Leiter set the glass down on the bedside table and stood, his face remote. 'It’s okay, James. You weren’t yourself. You’d just nearly died. We can forget about it.'

'I - ' Bond started, and then stopped.

'It’s okay, James,' Leiter said, quietly. 'It’s okay.'

And it seemed there was nothing else to be said. 

'You should go home,' Bond said, after a few moments. 'There’s nothing more to be done tonight, until our contacts come through, and I need to sleep this off.'

'Will you be safe here?' Leiter asked.

'I’ll be careful what I eat or drink,' Bond assured him. 'Now go. I need to . . . rest.' And he shut his eyes. 

'Goodnight, James,' Leiter said softly. 

As the darkness took him, Bond heard Leiter walk out of the door and lock it carefully behind him. 

* * *

Felix Leiter drove home in his Studillac, and took a long, hot shower. He looked up at the cream-colored paint of his bathroom roof - but he wasn't seeing it. Instead, his mind was filled with the memory of James' blue-grey eyes, at first wide in terror, and then strangely soft, strangely vulnerable, looking up at Leiter. 

Leiter's hand came up and brushed across his lips. 

Leiter had always made a practice of never dallying with other spies. His lovers had been anonymous, discreet men, except once in college. 

Leiter let the water run through his hair, and lost himself in memory. 

His name had been Michael, and he had been beautiful. Tall, brown curls, green eyes that always seemed to have a mischievous glitter in them. He had been a year older than Leiter, and had seemed, with his New York twang, like an older and more worldly man. Of course, Leiter supposed, looking back, he couldn't have been more than a boy of nineteen. He had been an artist, of course, and the kind of bohemian artist who made little secret of his preferences. Leiter had been shocked, at first. He'd known for a long time that he himself was a homosexual, but acting on it, much less declaring it openly to one's peers, was unthinkable to him. 

But Michael had been charming, and there was something about his manner that made it hard to think of anything he did as unnatural or unmanly. There were always men and women hanging off his every word, and it was hard to tell which ones wanted to sleep with him and which ones simply hoped that some of his artistic genius would rub off on them. Leiter had been out of place among them, a fan of the arts but a little too stiff and too clean cut to really ever pass for an artist himself. But somehow he had caught Michael's eye, and to Leiter, it had been like a fairytale. He had thought it was true love, all through college. 

And then college ended, and Michael had gone back to New York, and he had asked Leiter to come back with him, and - 

And Leiter had said no. 

He still wondered what his life would have been like if he'd said yes. Would he still be living with Michael today, rather than alone in DC? Would life as an artist's mistress ever have satisfied him? 

Perhaps not. Perhaps it was never meant to be. Young love never lasts, after all. 

And since then it had been a series of anonymous hookups, always looking behind himself to make sure he wasn't followed, always varying his routines, acting like a spy in enemy territory while in his own country. What room was there for love, in a life like that? 

And then there was Bond. There was no question that Leiter loved him. He would have said it was a brotherly love, the love of two soldiers bonded by common purpose and common battles. But now he wondered: was that true? Or had he simply been in denial, pretending he wasn't attracted to Bond because it would be so much easier that way? 

He had never expected Bond to be that way inclined. Not because of Bond's well known predilection for women - Leiter knew some men, like the bartender Levitt, went for both - but because of Bond's laundry list of prejudices. Bond was Leiter's friend and he would have died for the man, but he was not blind, and he could see that Bond was a singularly judgemental man. He had a word or a judgement for everyone he met, a stereotype for every kind of person under the sun. Leiter had occasionally known Bond to malign certain European minorities that Leiter hadn't even known existed until Bond started up. 

It didn't bother Leiter, exactly. After all, he wasn't exactly a prospective suffragette himself. And he liked to think of himself as an easy going man, in much the same way that Huxtable thought of himself as a patriot. It was part of his self image. He preferred to think of himself as a Switzerland - able to get along cheerfully with bigots and jazz musicians alike. 

But when the time came to ask Bond for help with the Gunner business, an awful leaden weight had settled in Leiter's stomach, and he had known that that same judgemental gaze would be turned on him. And suddenly Switzerland hadn't seemed like such a good role model after all. 

The Swiss had been cowards, anyway. 

Leiter's sleep that night was disturbed by blue grey eyes, the phantom brush of lips against his, and the bitter-almond smell of cyanide in vermouth. 

He woke up early and spent an hour puttering around his house, going back and forth on whether it was late enough to call Bond. He didn't want to disturb his friend's rest if Bond was still sleeping - but the memory of those frozen few moments when he'd thought Bond was dead weighed on him, and he wanted to hear Bond's voice and know he was all right. 

At about 8:30, Leiter received a call from his contact at the CIA, letting him know that there were no files anywhere that he could find about a man named Trésor Angélique. Leiter thanked him, hung up, and then swore violently into the empty air of his house. 

He held out for another half hour before he dialed Haven Hotel, and asked for Room D25. His heart was in his throat for those terrible few moments before Bond picked up the phone. 

'Hello,' Bond's voice said, somewhat ragged but sounding well enough. 

Leiter smiled in relief. 'Hello, James, you old reprobate. How are you feeling?' 

There was a pause, and Leiter wondered what was going through Bond’s head in that moment of silence. Was he evaluating himself for the aftereffects of cyanide poisoning?

Or was he taking the time to kick himself for having kissed Leiter the night before?

'Well enough,' Bond said, eventually. 'I think the incident may have cooled my enthusiasm for martinis, believe it or not.'

'No more martinis?' Leiter asked, joking. 'Who are you and what did you do with James Bond?'

Bond laughed, but there was something weak and strained to it, and Leiter was conscious of the absence of their usual easy camaraderie. 

'Come over to my house,' Leiter offered, impulsively. 'Got news that’s better discussed in person, and you can eat some food you won’t have to worry about.'

There was a short pause. 'Perhaps we could eat outside,' Bond suggested. 'It’s a fine day outside. Warm.'

_ And I don’t want to be alone indoors with you,  _ Leiter heard, and tasted bitterness. 'Of course,' he said, with forced cheer. 'There’s a table on the porch, I’ll drag out some chairs.'

'That sounds good.' There was another pause. 'I’ll take a cab. See you there.'

'Sure,' Leiter said. Another pause, and Leiter gritted his teeth. 'Goodbye, James.'

'See you.' 

The line went dead, and Leiter stood there and rubbed his face. God.  _ God.  _ He told himself he hadn’t expected anything else. And it might not even be because Leiter was a homo - after all, Bond had a track record of going cold on women who were interested in him, too. It was a defense mechanism of some sort, Leiter supposed, or another one of his thousand prejudices. And it was a damn awkward thing, having kissed a friend.

It made sense. It made sense. There was no reason for it to hurt. 

Leiter slammed the phone down on the receiver with unnecessary force, and went to cook breakfast.    


* * *

Breakfast was eggs over easy and bacon, with grits as a side. Normally, Leiter had iced sweet tea with his breakfast, but Bond had an irrational hatred for the stuff. At first, Leiter had thought he simply disapproved of Leiter's Southern way of making tea, and had prepared to drive into another friendly transatlantic sparring match, but he'd soon discovered that Bond did not hate  _ Southern  _ tea, but in fact despised  _ all  _ tea. Leiter had listened in astonishment, sipping his tea, as Bond blamed tea for the fall of the British Empire. He was not one hundred percent certain Bond had been joking.

'But it’s the same stuff as coffee, you know,' Leiter had said. 'Same medicine, different dosage. Caffeine and all that.'

'Then why settle for the inferior version?' Bond had shot back. 

So now Leiter poured two cups of black coffee and set them out on the porch table, and sat there sipping one. He wondered if that easy camaraderie would ever return, or if he had ruined everything already.

A taxi drove up, and Bond got out, tipping the driver, and Leiter waved to him. 'Hello, James!' He was determined to be friendly, even if Bond was being cold to him.

Bond nodded and came up to sit across from Leiter. 'Hello, Felix,' he said, without enthusiasm. 'You said you had news?' 

Leiter sighed, and shoved Bond’s plate across the table to him. 'News, and food,' he said. 'Not good news. My friends at the CIA and the FBI’ve gotten back to me, and there’s no files on a Trésor Angélique.'

Bond nodded. 'Nothing in MI6, either,' he said.

Leiter let out a breath. 'So it’s a dead end, then.' He rubbed his face. 'And they’re on to us, or else they wouldn’t have tried to kill you.' He felt despair rise in him. He’d been so careful, so careful, and all for nothing.

Bond looked away. 'Yes, well,' he said, distantly. 'It might not be. I have no shortage of enemies, you know. SMERSH, the American mobs, the mafia, after my last mission. It could have been one of them.' He wasn’t meeting Leiter’s eyes.

Leiter couldn’t bear it. Wasn’t it enough for him to lose his career and his reputation - did he have to lose his best friend as well? 'Look here, James,' he said. 'What happened last night - it wasn’t - ' He looked away, struggling for words. 'I’m still the same man I was yesterday, James. Nothing has to change. And you should know me well enough to know that I’m not going to - if you’re not - if you’re not interested in me that way, I’m not about to force the issue. I’m not a cad. I can take no for an answer.'

Bond said nothing, staring off into the warm Washington DC morning. He breathed in and out. Leiter could feel that same unbearable distance between them again.

'You think I’m being cold to you because I’m not interested in you, as a man,' Bond said eventually. 

'Yes,' Leiter agreed, frustrated.

'I’m not,' Bond said.

'But you - ' Leiter began.

'I’m not being cold to you because I’m not interested in you that way,' Bond said, still not looking at Leiter. 'I’m being cold to you because I  _ am.' _

The words hung there in the warm morning air.

'Oh,' Leiter said, swallowing. 

'Yes,' Bond said, distantly. 'It’s a problem.'

They sat there, picking at their food. Leiter’s mind was blank. He couldn’t think of what to say.

The ring of a telephone lanced through their silence, and both of them startled visibly at the sound. For a moment they had been in their own world, far away from the ordinary world of taxis and telephones. 

'Oh, it’s - it’s my telephone,' Leiter said, foolishly, and he stood to walk into his house and pick up the phone. 

'Leiter here,' he said.

'It’s me,' said the voice on the other end. 'Avraham Levitt - we spoke a few days ago.'

Leiter blinked. It seemed like an eternity had passed since their conversation with the owner of Betsy’s Paradis, so it was a shock to remember it had only been two days ago. 'Yes, of course. The, er, bartender. What can I do for you, Mr. Levitt?'

'It’s about the matter we discussed,' Levitt said, carefully. 'I have here a note from my friend Harlow Gunner, demanding a return to our - usual arrangement.'

Leiter raised an eyebrow. 'That’s not possible. Mr. Gunner is - indisposed.'

'I know,' Levitt said, annoyed. 'That’s what you told me. But it’s his handwriting, and his name signed.' There was a pause. 'Unusual for him to write, though. Normally he calls.'

Leiter did the math. It couldn’t be Gunner - Leiter had shot the man in the heart and Bond had buried him under two feet of concrete. That meant the note had to be from someone else. And that meant - 'Thank you for calling, Mr. Levitt,' he said, and meant it. 'Do what you have to do to keep Mr. Gunner satisfied. In the meantime, we’ll keep working at things from our end.' Leiter’s lips curled in a little smile, his first of the day. 'I think my friend and I will be able to bring this deal to a satisfactory conclusion.'

He ended the call and walked back out to James, who, true to form, had made significant inroads on his eggs and grits. Leiter grinned at him. 'Good news, James,' he said. 'Levitt’s got another blackmail demand from Gunner.'

Bond’s eyebrows went up. 'Seems unlikely, given that Gunner’s last known address was a shallow grave,' he said. 

'Exactly,' Leiter said. 'Which means this demand must be from his accomplice - Il Duce. Which means the bastard has decided to screw Gunner, and go into business for himself.' 

A smile slowly grew on Bond’s face. 'Which means we’ve bought ourselves a little more time before he releases any sensitive information.' He stood, and clapped Leiter on the back. 'Thank God! See? We’ve gotten out of tighter scrapes than this, and we will again.'

Leiter laughed, his heart lightened by the reprieve, and reached down to pour himself another cup of coffee. As he did, his finger brushed against the still-hot glass of the coffee pot, and he exclaimed in pain, and pulled his finger back to suck on it.

Bond’s eyes followed his motion, fixed on his mouth, and Leiter saw Bond’s face grow red before he looked away. 'Yes, of course,' he said, irrelevantly. 'Perhaps we should - er - investigate this. See if the letter can’t tell us anything further.'

Leiter’s eyebrows went up.  _ Well.  _ That was certainly an interesting reaction. 'Yes, let’s,' he said.

* * *

Betsy’s Paradise was nearly empty this time of the morning, and Levitt brought the letter out on the bar counter to show Leiter and Bond. Bond examined it with an expert’s eye. 'It’s a forgery,' he said, after a moment. 'Quite a good one, but you can tell that he’s made a muddle of the  _ t.  _ The letters in Gunner’s desk all had a sort of loop to them, as if Gunner didn’t quite pick up his pen before crossing his  _ t _ s. But we already knew that, of course.' He sipped his glass of wine. 

'He’s asking for more tapes,' Levitt said, pale and nervous. 'I had hoped - I had hoped it was over, when you spoke to me the other day.'

With a pang of sympathy, Leiter understood: This was good news for  _ him,  _ but not for Levitt, who was back over the same barrel. 'It’s not all bad news,' he said, trying to cheer the man up. 'This means Il Duce has gone into business for himself. Which means he has no intention of releasing the tapes en masse as Gunner wanted him to. We’ve been offered a reprieve, all of us.'

Levitt chuckled grimly. 'Score one for the faggots,' he said, wry, and lifted his glass in a toast, which Leiter returned.

When Leiter looked over, Bond was watching them, with a thoughtful look in his blue-grey eyes. But he said nothing. Leiter wondered, not for the first time, what his friend was thinking. Was he judging them, seeing how the two of them - the Jew and the homosexual - measured up to his laundry list of prejudices? Or did he simply see two men in a difficult situation, trying to make the best of it?

'Do you have any idea who this Duce man is?' Levitt asked, sipping his wine. 

'Not exactly,' Bond said. 'An associate of Gunner’s gave us a name, an Italian named Trésor Angélique - it would fit, for ‘Il Duce’ to be an Italian.'

'Trésor Angélique?' Levitt said, making a face. 'Strange name for an Italian. Or for a man, for that matter.'

'It must be an alias,' Leiter said, glumly. 'We’ve searched our records for the name - nothing.'

'But why use such an outlandish alias?' Levitt asked. 'There must be something in it for him. Something important to him.'

Bond nodded, slowly. 'Trésor Angélique . . . hmm. They’re vocabulary words in French:  _ treasure  _ and  _ angelic.  _ As well as being girls’ names. Rather high opinion of himself, this Duce man.'

'Unless it’s not just a descriptor,' Leiter said.

'Hmm?' Bond asked.

'What if it’s his actual name?' Leiter asked. 'Or a version of it?  _ Leiter  _ means ‘leader’ or ‘manager’ or something like that, in German. Perhaps it’s a translation.'

'Never knew you were a Kraut, Felix,' Bond said, cheerfully.

'Oh, shut up, you Limey bastard,' Leiter said immediately, delighted by the return to their usual banter. He became serious again. 'If this man is Italian, perhaps his real name is too - Tesoro Angelico? ‘Treasure’ and ‘angelic’ again, and that’s a man’s name, isn’t it?' 

Bond frowned. 'That could be it,' he said. 'Damned arrogant thing to do - but a man who calls himself  _ Il Duce  _ is liable to call himself any damn fool thing. Well, if he’s done it once, he might do it again. We should see if there’s any hits for other versions of that name -  _ Sokrovishche Angelskiy _ , perhaps. Or  _ Schatz Engelhaft.'  _ A corner of his lip curled at the outlandish names. 'Not very inconspicuous.'

'Mind if we use your phone?' Leiter asked Levitt. 'Assuming you haven’t bugged the line, that is.'

Levitt looked faintly affronted by the accusation, but didn’t say anything. 'In the back, in my study,' he said, with a gesture. 'Obviously you know the way.'

If that was a jab at them, Leiter felt he deserved it. He and Bond took their glasses of wine back to occupy Levitt’s study. Bond made the first phone call, to his allies in MI6, and seemed to have no immediate results. Leiter took the phone next, while Bond sat and drank and doodled on Levitt’s notepaper. 

Leiter’s FBI contact, a man named Thomas Milton, picked up on the fifth ring. 'Hello, Lynn here,' he said.

'It’s me, Felix,' Leiter said. 'I’ve got another favor to ask from you, I’m afraid.'

'More records searches?' Milton asked. Since Milton worked in records, that wasn’t a difficult guess. 

'That’s the one,' Leiter confirmed. 'Got a list of names to look for.' They’d made a list of all the possible variations on the theme of  _ Tesoro Angelico,  _ and Leiter read them out to Milton. 

Milton stopped him at  _ Schatz Engelhaft.  _ 'That name’s passed my desk recently. He was a suspect in a mafia-connected shooting in Baltimore about five years ago. . . but he vanished into thin air, and we haven’t been able to find him since.'

Leiter felt his pulse quickening. 'Give me everything you have on any of those names,' he said.

For the next twenty minutes, Leiter furiously scribbled down all the details Milton could give him. When he was done, he hung up the phone, a look of triumph on his face, and passed them to Bond. 

Bond grinned. 'Score one for the Yanks,' he said, taking them and leafing through. 'This man has been busy. Mafia, they think?'

'Yes - Or ex mafia,' Leiter said. 'Milton says some of them think the mess he made in Baltimore was enough to get him drummed out.' 

'Several of these have addresses attached,' Bond said, flipping through the notes. 'Not all the same address, though . . . either he moves around a lot, or these are all fake. We ought to check them all out anyway.'

'Where do we start?'

Bond leafed through the notes. 'Schatz Engelhaft, no known address. Sokrovishche Angelskiy, care of the White Eagle Cafe. Kanz al-Malayiki, 284 Welsley Ave #105.' He came up with one entitled 'Klenod Änglalik' - that same stupid name again, but this time in Swedish. 'What about this one?' he said. 'It’s quite recent - a bystander in a low-level breaking and entering - but it  _ must  _ be him, with that name. And it’s within the last month. 1738 Orchard Street.' He looked up at Leiter, a gleam in his eye. 'If that’s  _ not  _ a false address, he could still be there.'

'I’ll get my coat,' Leiter said. 'We have to start somewhere, after all.'

* * *

1738 Orchard Street was a shabby little white-washed house, thrown up just after the war. There was an Alfa Romero car parked in front of the garage - a nearly new one, looking sleek and out of place next to the cheap, worn-out house. 

Bond strode up the overgrown lawn to the front door, and jabbed the doorbell. When this produced no response, he hammered on the door. 'FBI! Open up in there, Angelico!'

No answer again. Leiter peered in through the windows and found the house dark. 'I think there’s no one home.'

'Well - what say you we invite ourselves in and see if this really is the place we’re looking for?' Bond suggested. 'If this is some random civilian’s house, we’ll be out before they know we were here. Do you still have those lockpicks of yours?'

Leiter grinned. 'Great minds think alike,' he said, producing them from a coat pocket. 'Keep watch, will you?'

Leiter had learned to pick locks five years ago, on a mission in the Middle East that he preferred not to think about. But he had kept the skill up, and it had come in handy many a time. The lock on this door was a simple one, and he had it open in half a minute. He pulled the door open triumphantly - and was met with a truly awful smell that had both he and Bond hacking and covering their noses. 

'What the hell is that?' Leiter demanded. He fetched out a handkerchief from his pocket, and covered his nose with it. 'Eurgh. You should watch the door in case he comes back - we don’t want a repeat of Gunner.' 

'I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,' Bond said, grimly. His handkerchief was also over his face, and he brushed past Leiter into the house. Leiter followed.

The smell only grew worse as they walked into the living room. Leiter saw a figure lying on the couch, covered in a blanket, and a sense of dread and disgust grew in his heart. Steeling himself, he reached out and pulled the blanket back.

'Oh, ——,' Leiter said.

'Yes,' Bond agreed.

The man had been dead for a long time, longer than Leiter wanted to think about, lying there mouldering on the couch like a sack of abandoned clothes. To Leiter’s relief, there was a wallet on the ground, fallen out of the dead man’s pockets. He wouldn’t have to search the body, at least.

Holding his nose, Leiter bent over and picked up the wallet. Yes, there it was, an excellent fake ID in the name of Klenod Änglalik. 'This is our man,' he managed. 'Or was.' 

Bond had stepped behind the couch, and, covering his hand with his handkerchief, picked up a spent bullet. '.45 ACP,' he said. 'Same as in Gunner’s Colt 1911, the one he tried to shoot us with.'

'I have to get out of here,' Leiter said, and rushed for the door. He leaned against his car and took a few deep, welcome breaths of air. A few moments later, Bond emerged holding a stack of papers in his hands, and shoved them into Leiter’s hands. 

'I think I’m going to be sick,' Bond said, conversationally, and then was, into the bushes next to the door. 

Leiter politely averted his eyes, and went through the papers Bond had handed him. They were addressed, in Gunner’s neat, sharp-edged hand, to  _ Il Duce,  _ and they contained a number of thinly coded references to their shared blackmail business. 'So Angelico was Il Duce,' Leiter said, once Bond was finished. 'And now he’s dead. Did someone else get here first, another one of his victims?'

'No,' Bond said. He went to wipe his face with his handkerchief, and made a face as he realized it was dirtied. 'Hell,' he muttered.

Leiter passed him Leiter’s own handkerchief. 

'Thanks,' Bond said, wiping his face. 'What a mess. You know, it’s one thing killing a man, another thing entirely coming on him after he’s been dead for weeks. Why couldn’t Gunner have cleaned up after his damn self?'

'So you think Gunner was the one who killed him?' Leiter asked.

'Yes,' Bond said, shutting his eyes. 'It’s the only thing that makes sense. That man in there must have been dead for  _ weeks.  _ That means he was dead when Gunner contacted you, and dead when  _ someone  _ contacted Levitt today. Gunner’s dead, Il Duce is dead - that means there must be a third player in our game. A second accomplice.' He drew in a breath. 'I found where Angelico kept his copies of the blackmail tapes. A hidden compartment - but it was left open, and empty. Someone took them.'

'Why?' Leiter asked.

'Gunner must have gotten himself a new accomplice,' Bond said, grimly. 'Once that was done, there was no need to keep the old one around. Perhaps he was a loose canon, perhaps his mafia ties posed a problem. Either way, no reason to be splitting the profits three ways when you could instead be splitting them two. So Gunner shot him, and took his blackmail tapes back, and gave them to - someone.'

Leiter gave this some thought. ' ——,' he said, with feeling. 'That means we’re back to square one.'

Bond leaned against the Studillac. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'I’m afraid it does.' His eyes snapped open. 'Let’s get the hell out of here, Leiter. It’s a vile place, and I want to get drunk.'

'Couldn’t have said it better myself,' Leiter said, and pulled open the passenger door. 'Come on. I know a good bar near my place. Let’s drink our sorrows away.'

* * *

It was still early, and so the bar was nearly empty. Leiter seized a table in the corner, nearly out of the sight of the bar proper. It suited his mood to be isolated. 

Bond ordered a double vodka, and Leiter a similar quantity of bourbon. They sat and drank together in silence, and watched the sun slowly set through the bar windows. When they were done, they ordered another round.

Leiter felt Bond’s eyes on him, and he looked away from the sunset to his friend. Bond was looking at him with such a mixture of emotion in his eyes that Leiter couldn’t put a name to it. Regret, longing, desire - 

Leiter looked away.

'If you were a woman,' Bond said, quietly. 'I’d invite you back to my hotel room after this.'

Leiter drained the rest of his bourbon. 'If I were a woman,' he said, 'You’d never have trusted me to do my job.'

There was a silence. Bond finished his vodka. 

'You really think I’m a raging bigot, don’t you?' Bond asked, eventually. 

Leiter didn’t answer. After a few moments, he waved a server over and ordered them another round. When it arrived, he took a sip of his bourbon, and waited for the server to be out of earshot.

'If this is the end of the line,' Leiter said, drawing in a deep breath. 'If this is as far as we can get before Gunner’s new accomplice ——s me over, I want you to know that I’m not ashamed.'

'I - ' Bond began, but Leiter cut him off.

'What you said to that damn cop,' Leiter said, 'About pity - well, I don’t need your pity. Or anyone’s. I haven’t got anything to be ashamed of. I’m not sorry about what I did, or about what I am. I’m only sorry I got caught.' He took a big swig of his bourbon, and repeated: 'I  _ don’t  _ have anything to be ashamed of.'

'I know,' Bond said, very quietly. He looked down, and took a swig of his vodka, and in that moment it almost seemed as if  _ he  _ was the one who was ashamed of himself. After a long moment of silence, he said, 'What kind of life is that for a man? No wife, no children, always looking over your shoulder afraid of discovery?' He didn’t meet Leiter’s eyes.

Leiter laughed. 'Well. Not so different from being a spy, is it?'

Bond chuckled. 'You have a point,' he said. He was staring off into the growing twilight now, his eyes distant. Leiter watched him. After a moment, he said, 'I really thought I was going to get married once.'

This seemed like a total non sequitur, but Leiter was drunk and so he listened in silence.

'Just after I met you for the first time,' Bond said, quietly. 'I met a girl . . . and I thought I . . .' He cut himself off and shook his head. 'I was a damn fool,' he said. 'I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t, I, I never knew her, I - ' He cut himself off, and swallowed vodka.  _ Drowning our sorrows,  _ Leiter thought. 'She killed herself,' Bond said, looking down into his glass. 

'I’m sorry,' Leiter said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He remembered her vaguely, the beautiful, reserved British girl from MI6. He had never thought to wonder where she had vanished off to, after the closure of the case. 

'Don’t be,' Bond said, roughly. He shook his head again. After a long moment, he said, 'It wouldn’t work, you know. You and I . . . even if - if you were a woman, if  _ I  _ were a woman, we’d - ' He shook his head. 'I’ve always been married to my work. And you, you have your career too. Hell of a thing to have a relationship with an ocean in the way. And there’d be no - we couldn’t even afford to exchange letters, to talk on the phone. Because we’d always have to be looking over our shoulders, waiting for the next Gunner to strike . . . there’s . . . there’s no future in it. Except to wait for retirement . . . and we both know we won’t make it that long. I won’t, at least.'

Leiter blinked.  _ Relationship  _ was a big word, especially coming from a man like James. Leiter swallowed. 'I thought,' he said, and then stopped himself. 'You’re talking about more than just sex,' he said.

Bond didn’t meet his eyes. 'Yes,' he said. 

'If,' Leiter found himself stumbling over his words.  _ Too drunk for this conversation,  _ he thought, but he knew neither of them would ever have dared to have it if they were sober.  _ We’re cowards after all,  _ he thought, bitterly. 'If - if I were a woman - then you’d - ?'

'Yes,' Bond said, and he drained the last of his vodka in one decisive gulp. When his eyes flicked to Leiter’s, they were full of a sort of desperate heat. 

Leiter swallowed. Despite the drink, he found that his mouth was dry, and he couldn’t seem to summon words. He felt his face redden.

'Come back with me, Felix,' Bond said, urgently. 'To your place - I - my hotel room isn’t safe. Not for us.' 

And that word,  _ us,  _ was full of meaning. Leiter swallowed again. 'This is a bad idea,' he whispered.

A corner of Bond’s lips curled in an ironical little smile. 'So are a lot of the things I do,' he said.

Leiter finished the rest of his drink, and stood. 'Okay,' he said, shakily.  _ 'Okay.' _ _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading chapter two! If you liked it, please leave a comment!


	3. 3 ……. ‘THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME’

James Bond woke up and stared at the white-plaster ceiling of Leiter’s house, and the unwelcome clarity of sobriety descended on him. 

He sat up carefully, and looked down at Felix, who was still sleeping. Even if he hadn’t remembered the events of the last night in crystal-clear detail, which he did, Felix’s body told its own story. There were bruises forming on his neck and his shoulders where Bond had bit him, the red trace of Bond’s fingernails down his muscular back. And Bond’s body bore the same signs. Bond poked ruefully at his collarbone, where Leiter’s teeth had sunk in particularly deep.

Well. There was no use in denying it, as he had been trying to do since his lips had first met Leiter’s. He was afflicted with the same perversion as Leiter. 

Bond was not a shocked housewife clutching her pearls at the mere thought of homosexuality. He was very familiar with such individuals. He had always thought them an accident of the modern age. Women were allowed to vote now, to wear pants and drive like men. It was an upset to the natural order, and of course any such upset had its side effects. Modernity had produced a herd of confused, effeminate men and aggressive, mannish women. Such people were to be pitied, but not catered to. 

What, then, was he to make of himself? The ever-masculine James Bond, with his womanizing and his fast cars and his guns and his old fashioned worldview - where had the upset come from? Could he really blame modernity for his own actions, his own choices? 

And suddenly he saw himself as if from the outside, exposed to that same judgemental analysis he turned on the rest of the world. He imagined some other agent, 008 perhaps, observing him and his behavior, writing it down for a dossier like the ones he had read a hundred times. 'Homosexual tendencies,' the dossier would say, 'probably brought on by the early death of his parents. Lack of a strong father figure. Classic case.' And then every aspect of his character and history would be put through that same filter, judged and found wanting. His womanizing nothing but a ploy to avoid marriage, his history in the Navy a punchline to a joke about sailors. His cars an overcompensation, and his guns - well, they'd said back at headquarters that his Berretta was a ladies' gun, hadn't they? More fuel for the fire. 

Bond's mind rebelled at the silliness of that logic. He knew damn well that he liked women, that the Navy was nothing to joke about, and that his choice of gun said nothing about him. And yet it was the same sort of logic he had turned on people time and again, making sense of them, fitting them into boxes, fact following conclusion. He knew that if he was exposed as a homosexual, it was exactly this logic that other men, perhaps even M himself, would turn on him. 'A pity,' they'd say, 'but we always knew there was something wrong with that Bond fellow. Something in his eyes. Something cold. Something unnatural.' 

And yet what he'd done last night, with Felix - it hadn't felt unnatural. Leiter had been strong and wild, egging him on, and Bond had risen to the challenge eagerly. It had felt like - not love, perhaps, but something close. Passion, that was it, as warm and vital and natural as life itself. Bond looked over to Leiter's sleeping body, and couldn't help but admire it, the blonde hair, the handsome face, the toned muscles - the muscles not of an actor or a vain Adonis, but real muscle born of fighting for one's life. It was a lovely body, and Bond had enjoyed it thoroughly last night.

And it was Felix. That was something else to consider, too. Even if he could categorize his own self into a neat little box, consign himself as a pervert - could he really do the same for his friend? Leiter was a good man, and he had been a good friend to Bond. Even when Leiter had, earlier that week, told him he was a homosexual, Bond had never thought twice about helping him out. Leiter was his friend, and that was all there was to it. To think of him the way he’d thought about Wint and Kidd, about Pussy Galore, about Tilly Masterton - it would have been a kind of betrayal. Bond was a lot of things, but he refused to be disloyal to his dearest friend.

Leiter’s eyes flickered open, and he blinked up at Bond, one hand coming up to brush his mop of blond hair out of his face. 'Like what you see?' he asked, teasing.

Bond chuckled. 'More than I’d like to admit,' he said. 

Leiter studied his face. 'Having second thoughts?' he asked.

'Always,' Bond said. 'And third, and fourth . . . but I suppose that’s what’s kept me alive this long.' He leaned in, and pressed his lips to Leiter’s, his eyes sliding shut. It wasn’t really any different from kissing a woman, he thought to himself. Except Leiter’s strong hand came up to hold Bond’s jaw in place, and then it was  _ very  _ unlike kissing a woman, and Bond liked that even better. 

They broke the kiss, panting. Leiter’s beautiful blue eyes gazed into his. 'If you keep kissing me like that,' Leiter said, 'I’m going to want a second round.'

Bond chuckled. 'I never make love before breakfast,' he said. The kiss had warmed him, but there was still an ache in his chest, a hollow, awful feeling of being seen from the outside. To assuage it, he laid back down in bed and pressed his face into the warm hollow of Leiter’s neck. Leiter’s arms came up to wrap around his shoulders and hold him close against that big, muscled chest. Bond shut his eyes. It was hard to believe there could be anything wrong or shameful about this. Leiter’s arms were warm and strong and firm around him. He thought of all the terrible things he’d suffered in his line of work, the hours spent lying weak and sickly in hospital beds, the nights spent trapped in some terrible dungeon. And then he compared that to this moment here in the morning sun, naked in the arms of a beautiful man. How could he ever call the one natural and the other wrong? 

One of Leiter’s hands came up Bond’s neck to stroke his hair, and Bond smiled. He thought he could spend the whole day like this.

Except that his contentment was immediately interrupted by a loud growl from his stomach, causing Leiter to laugh and sit up. 'Perhaps I’d better make you breakfast, then,' he said. 'If that’s what it’s going to take.'

'No,' Bond said, deciding. 'You stay in bed - I’ll do it. I owe you one. After all, you made me breakfast yesterday. Besides - it’ll save me from any more awful American inventions like ‘grits.’'

Leiter chuckled. 'Don’t lie to me, you ate up every bite of your grits. You would’ve had seconds if I’d made any.' He let go of Bond and lay back in bed, smiling up at him. 'All right, you Limey bastard. Show me what a real English breakfast is like.'

Bond leaned down to steal another quick kiss from Leiter’s lips, and then he went off to do just that. He searched Leiter’s cupboards, and was pleased to discover that Leiter had real ground coffee, not the frozen stuff. He also had quite a few different kinds of that loathsome herb that infested kitchens throughout England. Bond looked at them thoughtfully, and then pulled one out. Leiter had said he usually had tea for breakfast. Bond could be a gracious guest and make coffee for himself and tea for Leiter. 

He set Leiter’s coffee maker - the very newest model - to work, and started to boil a kettle of water for tea. As he broke the eggs and started frying them with a practiced hand, his eyes came to rest on the coffee maker and the tea-kettle. He had never liked tea. Tea was weak and watery and you had to drink a dozen cups of it to get the same effect. Coffee was full-bodied and delicious. Manly, even, he’d always thought - although he’d had the decency to be faintly embarrassed by the thought. 

Now, as he scrambled his eggs, he thought of the derision with which his cup of mud had met when he had been manning the phones back at headquarters, before the Goldfinger mission. And he wondered: could he make himself like tea, if he tried? Could he make himself  _ stop  _ liking coffee? Or was even such a simple choice ingrained in his genetics, written into his destiny by God or biology? 

When Leiter emerged from the bedroom, his hair damp from a shower and buttoning up his shirt, he found Bond dividing the scrambled eggs up into two plates, to join a serving of beans and sausages. Bond looked up, and smiled. 'Good morning, you lazy bum,' he said, cheerfully. 'You didn’t really have the ingredients for a  _ proper  _ English breakfast, but I did my best.'

'Lucky for me, then,' Leiter said. 'You’d have probably tried to serve me blood pudding or something.' He took a seat, as Bond poured two cups of tea, and let the banter go for a minute. 'Thanks, James, this looks delicious.'

'Real English cooking,' Bond said, taking a seat. 'I live by myself, so I figured I might as well learn to cook properly. It’s no good not having a proper meal just because there’s no one there to cook it for you.' He took a sip of his tea, and made a face. 'God, it’s still disgusting.'

'Are you drinking tea? I thought you hated the stuff,' Leiter said, raising an eyebrow. 'Here, put some sugar in it.'

'No, I’ve tried, it won’t help,' Bond said, wearily. He got up and dumped his tea out into the sink, and then, with a sigh of relief, poured himself a nice cup of coffee. 'Suppose it’s something in the blood,' he said. 'Which one you like, you know.'

'Yes, I suppose it is,' Leiter said, watching him thoughtfully. Bond had an uncomfortable feeling Leiter knew  _ exactly  _ what Bond was thinking. 'Coffee’s just as good, you know. No reason you have to pick.'

'Yes,' Bond said. 'Yes, I suppose that’s true.' He took a sip of his coffee. 'No use in trying to fight one’s natural inclinations.'

'Exactly how I’ve always thought,' Leiter said, sipping his tea. 'I’m glad you’ve come round to my way of thinking.' He smiled. 'Really glad.'

'Yes, well,' Bond said, quietly. 'I suppose it all looks different from the other side.'

Leiter smiled at him. 'Why are we talking in code? Trust me, I already checked for bugs. Won’t be making  _ that  _ mistake again. Technology marches along, but so do we human spies.'

Bond laughed. 'I suppose you’re right. It’s just a lot to take in. All these years, I thought I was one thing, and it turns out I’m another.'

'Code again,' Leiter noted. 'We  _ are  _ talking about being a faggot, right?'

Bond winced, and then was embarrassed by his own preciousness. 'Yes, the both of us,' he agreed. 'A lot to take in . . .' He shook his head, and took a sip of his coffee to cover for his hesitation. Gathering up his will, he said, 'Felix, I think I’ve been a bit of a cad to you. All that stuff about pity, and - well - all the other things I’ve said about it over the years, without knowing. Knowing about you, I mean. I didn’t - '

Leiter sipped his tea, and Bond could tell that his friend was considering whether to forgive him. His heart sank.

'You’re hardly the first man to say that kind of thing to me, you know,' Leiter said, evenly. He started in on his scrambled eggs. 

'Of course not,' Bond said. 'But you’ve never hesitated to help me out of a jam. You’ve always been a real friend to me. One can’t take that lightly, not in our line of work. I don’t, at least. And I’ve paid you back by being a prick to you.' He looked up at Leiter, hopefully. 'Will you forgive me?'

Leiter raised an eyebrow, and chuckled. 'Does that act work on your women, James?'

'Usually,' Bond admitted. 'How’s it working here?'

'I’ll let it pass,' Leiter decided. He leaned back in his chair. 'The breakfast helps, of course. And the tea. But one day, James, you’re going to talk shit to someone who’s not as forgiving as me. And then what?'

'Well, I’ve survived this long,' Bond said. And he smiled, wryly. 'And I don’t plan to live forever.'

They ate their breakfast, and chatted about everything and nothing. Bond found himself thinking how much easier to was to talk to Leiter than it would have been with a woman. There were benefits to sleeping with men, he supposed. 

'Hard to believe not twenty-four hours ago we were breaking into a house to find a dead body,' he said. 'Terrible business, that.'

Leiter chuckled. 'And don’t forget murdering a blackmailer and covering it up.'

'That too,' Bond said, laughing. And then, as he finished the last of his eggs, he grew thoughtful. 'You know, I’ve been thinking about that.'

'About killing Gunner?' Leiter asked. At the thought, he set down his fork. He seemed to have lost his appetite.

'About how he walked in on us so suddenly,' Bond said. 'It was as if he knew we were in there. And what was he doing coming home so suddenly in the middle of the day, anyway?'

'You think someone tipped him off?' Leiter asked. 

'Someone . . .' Bond said. 'Or his accomplice.'

Their eyes met. 'That maid you spoke to outside the door,' Leiter said, slowly. 'She might have known something was up. And if she was the accomplice, she might have even recognized me immediately. And then gone to phone Gunner . . .'

'She works at the hotel, and hardly anyone notices a maid,' Bond said, his pulse quickening. 'He’d be able to communicate with her without drawing any attention, and she’d be able to slip into rooms to check on the bugs if anything went wrong . . .'

'And she would’ve been sent up with room service, too,' Leiter said. 'Easy to slip something into your vermouth . . .'

Bond put down his fork, and stood. 'It’s the best lead we’ve got,' he said. 

Leiter chuckled. 'Maybe you should take a shower first,' he said. 'You look a bit . . .' His eyes travelled Bond, speculatively.

'Dishevelled?' Bond suggested.

'I was thinking ‘well ——ed,’' Leiter said, smirking.

* * *

Leiter and Bond returned to Haven Hotel, both freshly showered, shaved, and, in Bond’s case, with the collar of his coat slightly upturned to hide the bite marks. They paused at the reception desk, and Bond said to the receptionist, 'I was talking to one of your employees yesterday, pretty girl with black hair and blue eyes - I didn’t catch her name, but I don’t suppose she’s around?'

'Oh, you must mean Liese,' the receptionist said. 'I’m afraid it’s her day off today. She always takes Mondays off. She has to care for her aging mother, you see.'

'Oh, then perhaps you can help me,' Bond said. He leaned against the reception desk, and out of the receptionist’s sight, gave a little gesture to Leiter. 'You see, I’ve been having some sort of problem paying for my room - ' And he launched into a long, rambling story about the difficulties of trans-Atlantic banking and currency conversion. 

Leiter waited until the receptionist’s eyes glazed over, and then he slipped behind the desk and into the employee-only areas behind it.

It wasn’t difficult to find the employee records. There was only one big filing cabinet back there, and it was carefully organized and labelled in Gunner’s neat handwriting. The fact that Leiter didn’t know the maid’s surname posed some trouble, but Haven Hotel didn’t have many employees, so Leiter was able to simply flip through the files until he found one labelled 'Dunst, Liese.'

Rather than risk being discovered out of bounds, Leiter simply hid the file in his coat and locked the filing cabinet back up. He slipped back out into the reception area, where Bond had apparently finished expounding on banking troubles and digressed off into a lengthy story about the dangers of marrying air hostesses. The receptionist looked almost hypnotized with boredom. 

Leiter gave a little nod to Bond, who broke off his spiel with, 'But of course I'm boring you, I'm sorry. My bank'll come through any day now, I'm sure. I'll see you around.' 

As soon as they were out of sight of the receptionist, Leiter chuckled. 'You really did a number on that guy. I swear, I've never seen anyone so bored.' 

Bond looked affronted. 'I thought that story was quite interesting,' he said. 'It was told to me by the governor of Nassau, you know.' 

'Oh,' Leiter said, awkwardly. He had thought Bond had been boring the man on purpose. 'Oh, well, to each his own.' 

Once they had taken refuge in Bond's hotel room again, they laid Liese Dunst's employment records out on the bed. 

'German,' Bond noted. 'I barely noticed her accent; her English is very good.' 

'Or you were paying attention to something other than what she was saying,' Leiter said. 

'No, it wasn't that,' Bond said, thoughtfully, and then, 'Why, Felix, I believe you're jealous.' He grinned, as if he had just discovered something remarkable. 

'Who, me?' Leiter said, smirking a little. 

'I think you'd prefer it was  _ your  _ arse I was ogling,' Bond said, grinning. He learned in and cupped Leiter's jaw, going in for a kiss - 

And Leiter stopped him, pulling back and getting up off the bed. 'Sorry, James,' he said, softly. 'Not here. I won't be making that mistake again.'

And Bond remembered where they were, remembered who they were, remembered all the things he could never do with Leiter, and he looked away, and was silent. 

'You were right,' Leiter said, very quietly. 'There's no future in it. Being a homo.' 

'Yes, well,' Bond said, quietly. 'I never planned to live long enough to have a future, anyway.' 

'Never?' Leiter asked. He studied Bond's cold grey-blue eyes. 'Seems like a hell of a way to live your life.' 

Bond smiled at Leiter, soft and wry. 'It's worked out for me so far.' 

Leiter shook his head, and looked back down at Dunst's records. 'Not much here to incriminate her,' he said. 

'There's an address, though,' Bond said, flipping through the pages. 'We could go there and poke around. See if she hasn't been murdered too. The White Eagle Cafe, 167 Seeger Street…' 

Leiter frowned. 'The White Eagle Cafe. Where have I heard that before?' 

Bond blinked, because Leiter was right. Where had he heard that before? 'White Eagle,' he repeated. 'No - that's it. That was one of the addresses in Tesoro Angelico's FBI record. 'Care of the White Eagle Cafe.'' 

'That  _ has  _ to mean something,' Leiter said, grabbing his coat. 'It can't be a coincidence. There must be something there.' 

'In our line of work, there are no coincidences,' Bond said grimly, and he made sure his Walter PPK was loaded and in place before he, too, pulled on his coat.

* * *

The White Eagle Cafe was a ways out of town, up along Interstate 66. It was the sort of roadside cafe that always seems to be empty, and yet never seems to run out of money to pay rent. It was a big wooden building with the words  _ White Eagle Cafe  _ emblazoned on the front, accompanied by a logo of an eagle holding an orb. Bond’s eyes lingered on the logo. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place what. 

'Damn old building,' Leiter said, thoughtfully. 'I’m surprised it’s still standing. It can’t possibly be up to fire code - only one exit. One spark and the whole place’ll go up . . . wouldn’t be allowed in Texas.'

'Not so many sparks going around when you don’t live in a literal desert,' Bond pointed out.

'Yes, I suppose so,' Leiter said, and yet he still seemed nervous as they walked in through the door. 

Inside was a clean, empty little cafe, done up in an old-fashioned style. It could have been in any town in America - or, for that matter, in England. The only sign of its American-ness was a large portrait of a man whom Bond recognized as one of the American presidents, although he couldn’t place the name. In response to a look, Leiter muttered, 'Andrew Jackson. On the 20 dollar bill.'

There was a waiter sitting behind the counter. He had been reading a book which Bond recognized as Senator McCarthy’s new work, but had set it down immediately when Bond and Leiter walked in. 'Can I help you two gentlemen with something?' the waiter said.

'Yes,' Bond said. 'Actually, we were hoping we could have a word with Liese Dunst.'

The waiter looked surprised, but turned back and shouted into the back room, 'Hey, there’s a couple of guys here who want to talk to the boss!'

After a moment two people emerged from the back room, talking to each other. One was a tall, Germanic-looking woman clad in an old-fashioned white shawl, who brushed past Bond and Leiter. The other, Bond immediately recognized as Liese Dunst. 

Dunst came up to the counter and smiled her sweet, genuine, farm-girl smile at the two of them. 'Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?' she asked.

'There is,' Bond said. 'Perhaps we can talk in private?'

Dunst blushed. 'Oh,' she said. 'Well, perhaps, but - I have my reputation to worry about, you know. Perhaps my sister could sit in, as a chaperone?' She indicated the tall blonde woman, who was standing by the door behind Leiter and Bond.

The two agents exchanged a glance. 'You may not want your sister hearing what we have to say,' Bond said. 'This is business, not pleasure.'

'Oh, it’ll be all right,' Dunst said, earnestly. 'Greta hardly speaks any English. She’ll just be there for propriety’s sake.'

'Very well,' Bond said. If she didn’t mind her sister hearing that she was blackmailing half of Washington DC, it wasn’t Bond’s business to complain. 

Dunst smiled, and she, Greta, Bond, and Leiter all filed into a little break room with a worn table and a coffee pot. There were three seats; Dunst, Bond, and Leiter sat down, while Greta stood awkwardly by the door.

'So,' Dunst said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. 'What was it you boys wanted to talk to me about?'

'Harlow Gunner,' Leiter said, coldly.

Dunst smiled to herself. 'Tragic case,' she said. 'I hear he’s been dead for days. You two wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?'

'Perhaps his blackmail business caught up to him,' Bond said, his eyes on Dunst. 'That seems to be going around lately. Heard the same thing happened to a man named Tesoro Angelico.'

'Tragic, tragic,' Dunst said, lightly. She looked up from her coffee, and Bond saw that her eyes, which he had taken for blue, were in fact the same cold blue-grey as his. And Bond swallowed, because he knew that those were a killer’s eyes. 

He reached for his gun, and Dunst said, sharply, 'Don’t make any foolish moves, Mr. Bond, Greta has you covered.'

Bond froze, and looked behind him. Greta pulled aside the edge of her white shawl, to reveal a Luger trained on Bond.

'It was my husband’s sidearm when he was in the SS,' Dunst said, evenly. 'He shot himself in the head with it the day he knew the war was over. He knew he’d be put on trial for all manner of foolish things and executed. I don’t use guns myself, it’s not the sort of thing a good German woman knows how to do. But Greta doesn’t have the same compunctions.'

'So you’re Gunner’s accomplice,' Leiter said. 'A goddamn Kraut.'

'Please,' Dunst said, smiling. 'I prefer to think of myself as American these days. Germany’s bust, split in two by the Russians and the Americans. But America? That’s a country worth believing in. Hitler was a great fan of Andrew Jackson, you know, and so am I. Germany might’ve been overtaken by the Communists and the degenerates, but America is still fighting the good fight.' 

'I’d rather die than see my country overtaken by Nazi filth,' Leiter said, his lip curled.

'Well,' Dunst said, cheerfully. 'You’re going to get your wish. Faggots like you will be the first to die in the coming purge. What’s happening right now in America is just the start. Once Senator McCarthy’s done his work and purged the homosexuals and the Communists, SPECTRE will step in and bring back the Fourth Reich.'

'You’re a ——ing traitor, Dunst,' Bond spat. He was eying Greta, wondering if he could get the Luger away from her. She was too far away. He edged in that direction. 'We all know SPECTRE has no qualms about working with the Communists. If that’s who you work for, you might as well be one of them yourself.'

Dunst laughed. 'You English are all hypocrites. Didn’t you work with the Communists back in the war, back when  _ we  _ were the enemy? We’re just returning the favor. Don’t worry - when the time comes, we’ll purge them too, just like my husband did on the Night of Long Knives.'

'I should’ve known better than to fall for your good-girl act,' Bond said, his lip curling. He slipped further towards Greta. 'You’re really a little bitch, aren’t you?'

'Don’t make any shtupid moves, Herr Bond,' Greta said, sharply, in heavily-accented English, and Bond froze. 

'But you do the same thing, don’t you?' Dunst said, ignoring Greta. 'Playing the suave, masculine English gentleman . . . when really you’re just another little faggot like your friend here.' She jerked her head towards Leiter. 'Men like you are rotten to the core. This is what modernity brings: a pack of confused effeminates who think they can pass for  _ real  _ men. It’s a pity, really. Your friend would be quite handsome if he weren’t a fag. We need to bring back the good old days. When SPECTRE sent me to work with Gunner, I saw that he thought the same way I did. He was a  _ real  _ man.'

'And what about Angelico, was he a real man too?' Leiter asked, sarcastically. 'Before you put a bullet in his head?'

'I told you,' Dunst said, sharply. 'I don’t use guns. It’s not ladylike. Gunner shot the man himself. He was a liability. These Italians always are . . . Gunner needed someone who knew about the business of crime, so he needed a man like Angelico. He was ex mafia, looking for a new job - he fit the bill. But once SPECTRE got involved, he had a real professional to fill that role - me. We didn’t need Angelico anymore. Oh, Gunner put up a bit of a fuss, Angelico was an old friend of his - but he followed orders in the end. It was a good business, until you got involved.' She smiled. 'And it will be again, once you two are dead.' She held up a hand. 'Don’t worry. As long as you stay put, I have no intention of ordering Greta to shoot you. That will come later. We’ll get a SPECTRE interrogation specialist in here to deal with you - some ex-Gestapo man, hopefully.' She smiled at Bond. 'You almost threw a real wrench into SPECTRE’s plans, you know. The one mistake you made was underestimating me. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a homo doesn’t know the real value of a woman.'

Bond said, 'That’s true. I forgot that women can be cold-hearted, scheming, bigoted, traitorous filth too.'

'Watch your tongue, Mr. Bond,' Dunst said. She stepped towards the door and called out. 'Schmidt, would you put down your book and get in here? We’ve got a situation.'

The young waiter who had been manning the counter came in, accompanied by a third man who was taller and broader. Bond eyed this last one with some trepidation. He wasn’t sure he could take him in a fight - not if the tall man was trained.

'Tie them up,' Dunst ordered. 'Be careful of the British one, he knows what he’s doing.'

'I’m hurt,' Leiter said, sarcastic.

'Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure you have . . . other uses,' Dunst said, her eyes sweeping Leiter’s form speculatively. 'Maybe I’ll get to try out a few of them after the Gestapo man is done with you, hmm?'

'—— you,' Leiter spit out, and he struggled as the waiter tied him up.

It was the tall, broad man, who tied Bond, and Bond looked at Greta’s cold blue eyes, and decided not to try anything. He noticed, however, that the SPECTRE agents had tied Bond’s hands behind his back, and Leiter’s in front of them. That was what you got for recruiting your men from half a dozen different criminal and governmental organizations. No consistency in training. It wasn’t much, but having your hands in front of you could be useful for an escape attempt.

'Haul them down to the basement and lock them in,' Dunst ordered. 'I’ll contact SPECTRE and have an interrogation specialist sent right over. No - wait.' A cruel little smile came over her lips. 'I want a taste of the American before they break him. He might not have such a pretty face once they’re done with him. Let’s see if a real woman can ‘turn’ him, eh?'

'—— you,' Leiter said again, and he stepped back away from Dunst, coming up against the wall of the breakroom, unable to escape further. 

Dunst approached him, a predatory gleam in her big eyes. She braced an arm across his shoulders, holding him still, and seized his hair with her other hand, jerking his head down so that she could press her lips against his.

Bond looked away, his skin crawling with discomfort. He knew Leiter wouldn’t want Bond to see him like this. But he wasn’t thinking of Leiter. He was thinking of the Galore woman, the Lesbian gangster, and Bond’s own eagerness to ‘turn’ her. He saw that same urge reflected in Dunst’s predatory glee at the thought of kissing a homosexual man, and it sickened him. 

_ Is that what I’m like?  _ he asked himself, and had no good answer. 

To Bond’s relief, Dunst went no further than a kiss, and stepped back from Leiter, who was glaring daggers at her. 'Now you can toss them in the cellar,' she said, with a wave of her hand. 'And make sure you re-tie the American’s hands behind his back. I don’t want him getting any funny ideas.'

The waiter grabbed Leiter and re-tied his hands, dashing Bond’s hopes for an escape, and the two of them were dragged down, under Greta’s watchful eye, into a cold, dry cellar. To Bond’s further dismay, the SPECTRE agents there tied their legs up, and dumped them to lie on the concrete floor. Once the door was shut and locked behind them, the two agents lay in total darkness.

'Felix, I’m sorry,' Bond said, into the cold darkness. 'If it wasn’t for that damn Luger, I would have strangled her right there for what she did to you.'

Leiter’s laugh had an edge of bitterness to it, but there was real amusement, too. 'Well, the joke’s on her,' he said. 'While she was otherwise occupied, I got my hands into her pockets and got her keys. If she hadn’t thought to have my hands re-tied behind my back, I’d be out of here by now.'

A slow smile spread across Bond’s features. 'Felix, you’re a genius. I could kiss you.'

Leiter laughed. 'You’ll have to save that for once we’re out of here.' He wiggled himself across the concrete floor towards Bond, and Bond did the same, flipping himself over so that their backs - and, consequently, their hands - were facing each other.

'Hold still,' Leiter said. 'I’ll work on your ropes.' His hands groped across Bond’s in the darkness, finding the ropes and setting to work on them. Bond held his breath. Every moment Leiter’s hands brushed across his own flesh, his heart sped up, remembering the things those hands had done to him the night before. Bond sternly told his body that this was no time to be having such thoughts, but it didn’t seem to do him much good. Especially since Leiter seemed to be taking forever to get the ropes undone . . .

'Having trouble back there?' Bond asked, eventually.

'Yes, damn it,' Leiter said, letting out a frustrated sigh. 'These Germans know how to tie a knot. I think they planned to cut them off if they needed to get them off. If only I could see what I was doing!' His hands dropped away from Bond’s wrists.

'Let me try yours,' Bond said. 'If I can get yours loose, it won’t matter about mine.'

'Good idea.' Leiter held out his wrists to Bond, and Bond fumbled in the dark, getting his hands on the ropes. He struggled with the ropes, which were strong and rough and did not want to budge. He cursed.

'My lighter,' Leiter said, suddenly. 'If we can’t untie them, we can burn them off. No time to waste sawing through with the keys, but fire - Can you get into my pocket?'

'Yes!' Bond said. He shifted around, and his hands fumbled across Leiter’s back. His fingers brushed over a muscular rear, and for a moment Bond completely forgot what he was doing. He forced his mind to focus, and reached into Leiter’s pocket to curl his fingers around the cold metal of the lighter. He pulled it out. 'This might hurt,' he said, grimacing.

'Yeah, I know,' Leiter said, resignedly. 'But it’ll hurt a lot less than whatever Dunst’s Gestapo friend has planned.'

'I’ll be careful,' Bond promised. He flicked the lighter, and felt around for his free hand to grab the ropes. He held it as far away from Leiter’s skin as possible, and brought the lighter down, burning his own fingers in the process. He felt the rope catch fire, and Leiter tugged at the ropes, but they weren’t burned through yet. 'Just wait a moment, just a moment,' Bond encouraged, and he heard Leiter cry out as the flames grew - 

And then Leiter was pulling his hands free and sitting up, tossing the burning rope away and untying his feet. He stamped out the fire, and then leaned over to untie Bond’s hands and feet. Bond bolted to his feet, relief flooding him, and there in the darkness of the cellar, he seized Leiter, and pulled him into a kiss. Leiter responded, and for a moment it felt as if the rest of the world melted away into the darkness, nothing but Leiter’s strong arms around him and Leiter’s lips against his and Leiter’s soft blond hair in Bond’s hand.

When Leiter broke the kiss, Bond flicked the lighter on, and held it up so that the light from the flame painted Leiter’s face in orange. In the dim light, Leiter looked strong, and heroic, and unbelievably handsome. 

'I’d strip you right here if we didn’t have to get the hell out of here,' Bond said, and Leiter grinned.

'You really are incorrigible,' he said, chuckling to himself. He took the lighter from Bond and held it up, getting a better look around the cellar for anything that could help them. There were a lot of bags of sugar and flour, potatoes, other things that wouldn’t have looked out of place in any cafe back room, and a few other necessities, like gasoline and tools and ladders. But behind them, there were cardboard boxes with masking-tape labels on them. 

'Is this what it looks like?' Leiter breathed, and stepped closer to examine the labels. 'It says  _ Haven Hotel -  _ and  _ Betsy’s.  _ These are Dunst’s copies of the blackmail tapes.'

Bond laughed. 'That’s it!' he said. 'We found what we were looking for. We might have nearly got ourselves shot in the process, but we did it!'

Leiter chuckled. 'Well, that’s one way to stumble onto it,' he said. 'Get thrown in here because they haven’t got a proper cell. But how are we going to get them out of here?'

Bond looked around the cellar, and a grim look came into his eyes. 'We won't need to,' he said, and he stepped over the bags of sugar and picked up the can of gasoline. He opened it up and poured it over the dry, flammable ledgers and tapes. 

'We'll have to get out of here in a hurry once you light that,' Leiter said. 

'I don't plan on lighting the fuse until we're out of here,' Bond said, grimly. He fished around in the tool chest, and pulled out a hammer and a sizable wrench. 'Better than nothing,' he said, and passed the wrench to Leiter. 

Leiter took the wrench and balanced it against his shoulder, like a baseball player. 'Let's show these Krauts some good old fashioned American baseball,' he said, with a glimmer in his eyes. 

'Be ready,' Bond warned, and approached the cellar door with the keys, Leiter holding the flame for him. He turned the key as slowly and quietly as he could, his heart in his throat.

The guard outside their door - the big man who had tied up Bond - had his back turned, lighting a cigarette and taking a puff. They couldn’t have asked for a better setup. Bond took two steps forward, as silently as possible, and slammed the hammer into the back of the guard’s head, as hard as he could. The guard crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, and Bond caught his body and lowered it to the ground. He didn’t check to see if the man was still alive. It wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

The two agents crept up the stairs to the door to the kitchen. Bond opened the door at a snail’s pace, and peeked out through a crack. The kitchen beyond was empty, and Bond could hear two female voices speaking German behind the door to the break room. Greta and Dunst, he thought. That left one body unaccounted for - the waiter.

They crept through the kitchen, one eye on the break room door, one eye ahead. Bond stepped out behind the counter, and looked around. The cafe was deserted, the front door barred and locked, and a sign reading ‘Closed’ on the outside.

Bond slipped out from behind the counter and pulled out the keys again to unlock the front door.

And then, from behind him, there was the sound of a toilet flushing, and a door opening, and the young waiter, Schmidt, walked out behind the counter.

If he’d chosen that moment to shout, Bond and Leiter might have been done for. But instead, his eyes opened wide, and he said, 'Please don’t - '

And in that moment, Leiter was on him, the wrench smashing into his face like a baseball bat, and the waiter was down on the floor, his skull a wreck. There would be no question of checking to see whether he was alive. 

Leiter was shaking. He looked away. 'Not exactly baseball, is it,' he muttered, nonsensically. 

Bond went to him, and took him by the shoulder. 'Come on,' he said, and led his friend out the door. There, he locked it from the outside, and dragged a garbage bin over to block it, on the off-chance that they had another key. He took the gasoline can and splashed it everywhere he could reach, leaving a little trail on the ground as a fuse.

'Not up to fire code,' Leiter muttered, sounding cold and miserable. 'Only one exit . . .'

Bond knelt down, and put the lighter to his fuse. The flame followed the trail back up to the restaurant, and quite suddenly the whole thing was in flames.

They watched as the flames grew up and raked the blue sky. Eventually, Bond said, 'You know, she made the same mistake I did.'

'What’s that?' Leiter asked.

'I underestimated her because she was a woman. And she underestimated you because you’re - a homosexual. If she hadn’t decided to get handsy with you, we’d have been in deep trouble.'

Leiter chuckled. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I guess I should be grateful she was such a cad.' 

There was a bitterness in his voice, and Bond turned to face him. But before he could say anything, Leiter cut him off. 'Let’s get the hell out of this damn place, James,' he said. 'Come back home with me - damn the hotel. You can stay with me until your flight out of here. If anyone asks, you’re sleeping on the couch.'

Bond reached out, and took Leiter’s hands in his, and kissed him. 'I’d like nothing better,' he said, softly.

* * *

The radio in Leiter’s car was tuned to a jazz station, and it was playing a song that had been new when Bond was a young man, back before the war, long before he became a spy, long before he sold his soul to his country.

_ 'We may never never meet again, on that bumpy road to love,'  _ sang Fred Astaire’s voice. _ 'But I'll always, always keep the memory of - The way you hold your knife, the way we danced till three, the way you changed my life - No, no, they can't take that away from me.' _

Bond reached over and turned the radio off. 'To tell you the truth, Felix, I never much liked jazz.'

A corner of Felix’s mouth turned up, rueful and affectionate. 'You have no taste, James. Jazz is the only music these days that has a real pulse.'

'An arrhythmic one,' Bond jabbed back. 'There’s no pattern to it.'

'It’s not Fred Astaire’s fault you’ve got no rhythm, James,' Leiter said. 'If this makes you nervous, Cab Calloway might give you a heart attack.'

'Heard it, didn’t like it,' Bond pronounced. 'Don’t they play Vera Lynn over here? I like her.'

Leiter chuckled. 'You like her music - or you like her picture on the record cover?' he teased. 

Bond smiled. 'Why pick?' And he looked over at Leiter, and Leiter met his gaze, a grin on his lips and so much fondness in his eyes that suddenly Bond wanted to stop the car and reach out to him and hold him.  _ Damn England,  _ he wanted to say.  _ I’ll stay here. I’ll cancel my flight. I’ll stay, with you . . . _

But then the traffic-light turned green and Leiter turned right into the airport car park, and they were there. Bond knew it had been a silly fancy. This was the real world, not a Fred Astaire musical, and Bond had his duties, and so did Leiter.

Leiter parked, and the two men got out of the car and stood there for a moment. Leiter came over by Bond, and put his hands on Bond’s shoulders. 'I’m gonna miss you, James,' he said, quietly.

Bond wanted to lean in and take Leiter’s face in his hands and kiss him, and knew he couldn’t do even that. Not here, outside, under the bright American sun, where anyone could see them. He would never be able to do that, not with Leiter. 

'I’ve got a sort of going-away present for you,' he said. He jerked his head towards the trunk of Leiter’s car. 'In the box I brought from your home.'

Leiter quirked an eyebrow. 'I won’t lie, I was wondering what the heck that was.' He stepped around back of the car, and opened the trunk. 

Bond picked up the big box, a plain brown cardboard box with a British postmark, and handed it to Leiter. 'Open it,' he said. 'But not too wide. It’s not for public consumption.'

Leiter looked at him quizzically, and peeled away the packing tape to lift a cardboard flap and peer in. Inside, there were three silver-and-black boxes, with dials and buttons on them. Leiter blinked at them, and then up at Bond. 'What the hell is it?' he asked.

Bond smiled. 'Her name’s Delilah,' he said, patting the side of the box. 'She’s a bit outdated now.One of the first scramblers . . . Alan Turning designed her. They never put her into real use - this was just a prototype. And it was just gathering dust back at records.' He gestured. 'Plug her into your phone, and anyone listening will just hear static. And of course, I’ll have her sister, back in London.' He smiled. 'We can talk freely, then. Like lovers do.'

Leiter looked up at him, and his eyes were terribly fond again - but terribly sad, too. 'And is that it for us? Talking on the phone every week while you go out and sleep with women?'

Bond shook his head, and looked away. 'Not forever,' he said, softly. 'Just until retirement.'

'Thought you weren’t planning on living that long,' Leiter said, quietly.

Bond looked away, off over the tarmac, where a white and red BOAC plane was just taking off. Bound for where? France, perhaps, or Morocco? Bond remembered Levitt’s words.  _ It’s the way of the world. Is it? Not in France. Not in Morocco.  _ Not everywhere was like England and its bastard child, America. Was that a sign of their barbarism, the inferiority that Bond had always been certain lurked at the heart of every country other than England? Could Bond dismiss it so, when he was the one who would have benefited from those barbarous laws?

'I never used to,' he said. 'But now I have something to look forward to.' He offered Leiter a weak little smile. 'Maybe that’ll make a difference.'

'I hope so,' Leiter said, returning the smile. He set the box down, and stepped forward, and pulled Bond into a hug, strong and secure, and Bond found himself clinging to his friend. He shut his eyes, and told himself sternly to be a man and not to cry. 

'I’ll miss you, Felix,' Bond said, his face pressed against Leiter’s shoulder.

'Not forever,' Leiter said, echoing his own words back to him. 'Just until retirement.'

And then it was time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thank you for reading to the end! If you liked it, please leave me a comment.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Again, if you enjoyed it, please leave a comment!


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